Objectives: To investigate if serum PSA levels would correlate with patients' symptoms. Serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels correlate to size of the prostate gland. Prostate gland size has a direct correlation to the symptoms experienced by patients.
Patients and methods: A retrospective analysis of cross-sectional data collected on levels of serum PSA and symptom scores using the International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS) collected from males who attended the prostate clinic in Christchurch Public Hospital with a diagnosis of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) in the period of January 2007 to January 2012. A total of 833 subjects were found and a Pearson product moment correlation analysis (r value) and a coefficient of determination (R2 value) was calculated to compare PSA levels versus symptom scores.
Results: PSA compared to IPSS showed a mild trend with a r-value of 0.1375 (p=0.00003): showing a mild statistically significant correlation between these two parameters. However R2 value was only 0.0189 meaning each unit increase of serum PSA only influences 1.89% of the change in the symptom score. PSA vs QoL scores, there was a mild correlation found with the r-value of 0.207 (p=0.00001). However the R2 value was only 0.043, showing only a mild 4.3% influence by PSA on quality of life.
Conclusion: PSA would not be a good predictor for symptom scores and hence it is unable to accurately gauge the symptomatic severity in BPH patients.