What does the Gleason score mean?
The grade of a prostate cancer specimen is very valuable to doctors in helping them to understand how a particular case of prostate cancer can be treated. In general, the time for which a patient is likely to survive following a diagnosis of prostate cancer is related to the Gleason score. The lower the Gleason score, the better the patient is likely to do. However, remember that prostate cancer is a very complicated disease. People with low Gleason scores have been known to fare poorly and men with high Gleason scores have been known to do well. General principles do not always apply to individual patients. By combining the patient’s Gleason score with his PSA level and the clinical stage estimated by the physician, it is possible to use the Partin coefficient tables to estimate the likelihood that that patient has localized or locally advanced prostate cancer of different types.
