Overview of Lymph Node Spread Calculator

For the purposes of this calculator, Lymph node spread refers to a condition in which cancer has spread to the pelvic lymph nodes. A determination that prostate cancer has spread to the lymph nodes has a significant impact on what treatment choices are available to the patient and the patient's long-term prognosis.

Clinical stage - When a man is diagnosed with prostate cancer, an effort is made by the clinician (physician) to evaluate the stage of the cancer. The clinician gathers information from such tests as the PSA blood test, digital rectal exam (DRE), and possibly other tests to determine to what extent the cancer has grown. The clinical stage is the physician's "best educated guess" of the patient's actual stage.

Clinically localized means that the clinical evidence at the time of the clinical evaluation suggests that the cancer has not grown beyond the prostate gland.

Details

The Lymph Node Spread (LNS) calculator was developed using clinical and pathological information on 6,135 patients at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions between 1985 and 1998. The men underwent radical prostatectomy and pelvic lymph dissections (they had their prostate and pelvic lymph nodes removed surgically) for clinically localized prostate cancer.

Model

We found that this calculator is well modeled with three input parameters: Clinical Stage, Gleason sum, and Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) Level.

Validation

The ANN was validated (tested) using patient data from Johns Hopkins and patient data from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC. In the future, we plan to validate this model with data from other institutions.

 

Updated on 17 October 2007

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Accessed on 28 March 2024.