ABSTRACT

Since the late 1980s, prostate-specific antigen (PSA) has established itself as the most important tumor marker in all solid tumor oncology and has become indispensable in the management of prostate cancer. Since the introduction of PSA-based screening, there has been a marked increase in the incidence of clinically, and pathologically, organ-confined disease, and the majority of prostate cancers diagnosed today are nonpalpable PSA-detected tumors (T1c).1 Still, controversy surrounds the use of PSA as a routine screening tool, and, for this reason, great efforts have been devoted to understanding the relationship between PSA and tumor biology before, at the time of, and after prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment.