Prostate Cancer Risk Calculators for Healthy Populations: Systematic Review

BACKGROUND: Screening for prostate cancer has long been a debated, complex topic. The use of risk calculators for prostate cancer is recommended for determining patients’ individual risk of cancer and the subsequent need for a prostate biopsy. These tools could lead to better discrimination of patients in need of invasive diagnostic procedures and optimized allocation of health care resources OBJECTIVE: The goal of the research was to systematically review available literature on the performance of current prostate cancer risk calculators in healthy populations by comparing the relative impact of individual items on different cohorts and on the models’ overall performance. METHODS: We performed a systematic review of available prostate cancer risk calculators targeted at healthy populations. We included studies published from January 2000 to March 2021 in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, or German. Two reviewers independently decided for or against inclusion based on abstracts. A third reviewer intervened in case of disagreements. From the selected titles, we extracted information regarding the purpose of the manuscript, analyzed calculators, population for which it was calibrated, included risk factors, and the model’s overall accuracy. RESULTS: We included a total of 18 calculators from 53 different manuscripts. The most commonly analyzed ones were the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial (PCPT) and European Randomized Study on Prostate Cancer (ERSPC) risk calculators developed from North American and European cohorts, respectively. Both calculators provided high diagnostic ability of aggressive prostate cancer (AUC as high as 0.798 for PCPT and 0.91 for ERSPC). We found 9 calculators developed from scratch for specific populations that reached a diagnostic ability as high as 0.938. The most commonly included risk factors in the calculators were age, prostate specific antigen levels, and digital rectal examination findings. Additional calculators included race and detailed personal and family history. CONCLUSIONS: Both the PCPR and ERSPC risk calculators have been successfully adapted for cohorts other than the ones they were originally created for with no loss of diagnostic ability. Furthermore, designing calculators from scratch considering each population’s sociocultural differences has resulted in risk tools that can be well adapted to be valid in more patients. The best risk calculator for prostate cancer will be that which has been calibrated for its intended population and can be easily reproduced and implemented. TRIAL REGISTRATION: PROSPERO CRD42021242110; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=242110