Clinical and functional outcome of salvage vesiculectomy for local prostate cancer recurrence: a single-arm meta-analysis

Introduction & objectives: Salvage vesiculectomy has been proposed by several experts to deal with isolated seminal vesicle recurrence (ISVR). Although initial research has shown that the salvage vesiculectomy is successful, there is still disagreement over its clinical efficacy and safety due to the lack of strong randomized controlled trials. To support the clinical use of salvage vesiculectomy, this study intends to assess its safety, outcome and clinical impact.
Materials and methods: Electronic databases including PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar were widely searched for studies until 2025. The primary outcome was recurrence rate, and secondary outcomes were overall survival, complications, deaths and time to recurrence. The Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) critical appraisal was assessed for risk of biases. The registration number in PROSPERO was CRD420251054103.
Results: According to the selection criteria, we identified 6 publications with a total of 227 patients. The results revealed that the pooled overall survival was 96% [95% CI: 0.88-1.00]. The recurrence rate was 63% [95% CI: 0.56-0.70]. The therapy-free survival was 33.15 months [95% CI: 27.45-40.03 months]. The time to recurrence was 19.59 months [95% CI: 17.63-21.78 months]. The incidence of complications rate was 14% [95% CI: 0.03-0.25], and the pooled incidence of death was 3% [95% CI: 0.00-0.07].
Conclusions: Faced with this supporting data, salvage vesiculectomy can be used as a secondary treatment for localized prostate cancer recurrence in the seminal vesicle for highly selected patients.