MRI-guided biopsy best for determining future risk of prostate cancer, study shows

Every year, tens thousands of men in the United States are diagnosed with low-risk prostate cancer. Most are told that they don ’t need treatment other than “active surveillance” to monitor their slow-growing tumors. Now, UCLA physicians have shown that the best way to proceed with this is by starting out with an MRI-guided prostate biopsy.In the past, doctors relied on ultrasound to guide a biopsy needle into the prostate. However, ultrasound doesn ’t allow the visualization of prostate tumors, so a biopsy may have missed a tumor. Over the past decade, it’s become possible to instead perform an MRI-guided biopsy. MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, lets doctors see the majority of prostate tumors and take a biopsy from the exact location o f the cancer within the prostate.“We’ve found that when you use an MRI-guided biopsy to confirm what appears to be a low-risk prostate cancer, you can then tell the patient with pretty good accuracy what the future is going to entail and what his risks are of having a cancer that will require treatment in the future,” said Dr. Leonard Marks, senior author ofthe paper published in  JAMA.Prostate cancer is typically detected with a blood test measuring levels of prostate-specific antigen, or PSA. However, elevated PSA levels detect not only aggressive prostate tumors, but also very slow-growing cancers that are unlikely to become life-threatening. Men with higher than usual PSA levels are referred to get a biopsy, in which ...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news