Are Partin tables suitable for Chinese patients with prostate cancer

Background Recently, the number of patients with prostate cancer who needed to be treated with radical prostatectomy increased rapidly in China. There is still a difference between clinical staging and the post-operative final pathologic staging; hence, an excellent tool for accurately predicting the pathologic stages of prostate cancer is needed urgently in clinical practice. The Partin tables are the most popular and widely used tool for predicting the pathologic stages of prostate cancer because of its high accuracy and ease of implementation. The aim of this study was to externally validate the accuracy of the three versions of the Partin tables in predicting the post-operative pathologic stages in Chinese patients with prostate cancer. Methods We retrospectively analyzed the data from 203 patients with prostate cancer who underwent radical prostatectomies between June 2000 and May 2012. The accuracies of the three versions of the Partin tables in predicting the post-operative pathologic stages in Chinese patients with prostate cancer were evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve （AUC）.