Much attention paid to multiparametric prostate MRI has focused on its ability to improve prostate cancer detection and diagnosis. However, prostate MRI has the potential to improve other aspects of prostate cancer care. Beyond guiding biopsy needles, prostate MRI can also aid prostate cancer staging, inform treatment planning and to monitor patients following treatment.
There has been a lively debate in the medical community on the role of the PSA test in the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer. This debate must not lead more men to ignore the warning signs of prostate cancer – more men were diagnosed with prostate cancer than Americans were diagnosed with breast cancer last year.
A growing body of evidence proves MRI can effectively identify suspicious lesions prior to biopsy. MRI generally does not detect indolent tumors that do not require treatment and can guide biopsy needles for more precise targeting. This reduces the necessity for repeat biopsies while increasing detection rates for high-risk, high-grade prostate cancers. However, the practice of using MRI to detect prostate cancer before performing biopsy is not widespread.
Prostate cancer takes an incredible toll on American men, yet awareness of basic prostate cancer facts is lacking.
Ongoing research has consistently shown that multiparametric prostate MRI can aid prostate cancer screening and improve detection rates. New results to a large-scale study investigating the effectiveness of MRI-TRUS fusion biopsy versus traditional TRUS biopsy demonstrate the superiority of multiparametric prostate MRI in prostate cancer detection.
The American Cancer Society estimates that more than 220,000 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2015. Around 1 in 7 men will be diagnosed during their lifetimes. This September, the RadNet Prostate MRI program encourages men to learn more about prostate cancer and their prostate cancer imaging options.
In order to raise awareness of Prostate Cancer Month, Dr. Princenthal recently visited KCAL-9 to talk about some of the issues involved in the prevention and treatment of prostate cancer. It’s the second most common cancer among men, with over 220,000 new cases every year, yet many men aren’t aware of how to protect themselves with basic screening techniques, like the PSA blood test or prostate MRI.
Multiparametric MRI is one of the latest and most effective tools employed to detect prostate cancer. It supplements ordinary MRI scans with additional imaging in order to provide radiologists with detailed anatomical information about the patient’s prostate gland. If a tumor is detected, multiparametric MRI allows radiologists to measure its size, map its position, determine its stage, estimate its Gleason score, and check whether it has spread beyond the prostate.
