MRI for prostate cancer

Magnetic resonance imaging for prostate cancer? In recent years, patients suspected of prostate cancer have undergone blood tests to detect whether the concentration of prostate-specific antigen exceeds the standard. If it exceeds the standard, a transrectal ultrasound biopsy is performed. This process uses ultrasound detection under local anesthesia to penetrate the rectal wall into the prostate to extract the sample to be analyzed.

However, medical staff admit that "using ultrasound to diagnose diseases may miss certain cancers or cause overdiagnosis, leading to unnecessary surgery, so this diagnostic method is not accurate and reliable. However, the latest multi-parameter magnetic resonance imaging technology can perform accurate and detailed scans, making it easier to identify whether a patient has cancer and predict the exact size, location and degree of harm of the tumor."

Recently, many men with elevated PSA levels or who experience sudden discomfort in the prostate have been advised to undergo a biopsy. However, most do not have cancer at all, but rather have elevated PSA levels due to other conditions such as prostate enlargement.

Experts say biopsies can miss some cancers and even misdiagnose others, leading to unnecessary treatment. "You could miss other cancers in the prostate where the needle can't reach, or you could perform unnecessary surgery to remove a slow-growing or even harmless tumor," he said.

He recently teamed up with colleagues from nine other hospitals across the UK to diagnose 700 men suspected of prostate cancer, for a study that will end in October 2015. He said: "If the study shows that multi-parameter MRI scans can accurately identify whether a patient has prostate cancer, it will be a technological revolution in the way prostate cancer is diagnosed.

This means more patients can benefit from aggressive scanning, which can diagnose and treat cancer in its earliest stages without the need for biopsies.”

It is reported that prostate cancer is the most common cancer in the UK, and its target patients are mostly over 50 years old. About 37,000 new cases are diagnosed in the UK each year.