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BACKGROUND: Currently, the 2002 American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) staging system of prostate cancer does not include any stratification of patients according to the number of positive nodes. However, node positive (N+) patients share heterogeneous outcomes according to the extent of lymph node invasion (LNI). OBJECTIVE: To test whether the accuracy of cancer specific survival (CSS) predictions may be improved if node positive patients are stratified according to the number of positive nodes. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: The study cohort included 703 N+ M0 patients treated with radical prostatectomy (RP) and extended pelvic lymph node dissection (ePLND) between September 1988 and January 2003 at two large Academic Institutions. Number of positive nodes was dichotomized according to the most informative cut-off predicting CSS. Kaplan-Meier curves assessed cancer …