Response to: Handling of radical prostatectomy specimens: total embedding with whole mounts, with special reference to the Ancona experience

specimen integrity, including missing parts, capsular incision into tumour and benign glands at the surgical margins; • type of surgical procedure applied, i.e. nerve sparing; and previous surgical procedure, such as transurethral resection of the prostate; • presence of tissues other than prostate, i.e. rectal wall; • morphological prognostic and predictive features, such as Gleason score, stage, surgical margin status and tumour volume; and • comparison of pathological findings with digital rectal examination (DRE), transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) and prostate biopsy findings. Even though whole mounts of sections from RPS appear not to be superior to sections from standard blocks in detecting adverse pathological features, their use has the great advantage of displaying the architecture of the prostate and the identification and location of tumour nodules more clearly, with particular reference to the index tumour; further, it is easier to compare the pathological findings with those obtained from DRE, TRUS and prostate biopsies. In conclusion, we are in favour of complete sampling of the RPS examined with the whole mount technique. There are reasons in favour of this, with some limitations. Its implementation does not require an additional amount of work from the technicians. It gives further clinical significance to our work of uropathologists. In particular, it provides us with important pieces of information of paramount importance in relation to the definition of insignificant versus significant prostate cancer, as well as to contemporary approaches in prostate cancer treatment, including active surveillance and focal therapy.