MRI for all men suspected of prostate cancer could save thousands of lives - new study

Henry Bodkin
Updated
MRI caught 12 per cent more cases of dangerous prostate cancer - Patrick Harrison
MRI caught 12 per cent more cases of dangerous prostate cancer - Patrick Harrison

Giving all men with suspected prostate cancer an immediate MRI scan would save thousands of lives a year, the results of a new study suggest.

A trial by British scientists found the comprehensive scan was 12 per cent more likely to detect dangerous tumours than the traditional biopsy, and that the number of men who undergo a biopsy needlessly could be reduced by 28 per cent.

Every year more than 120,000 men in the UK undergo a biopsy, which involves inserting an ultrasound probe into the affected area to take a sample of cells from the prostate that might contain cancer.

The team at University College London believe that with the new strategy more than a quarter of the one million men who currently undergo a biopsy across Europe every year could "safely avoid it".

The trial, presented at the European Association of Urology Congress in Copenhagen, with publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, saw researchers from 23 centres randomly allocate 500 men with suspected prostate cancer to be examined either with a standard biopsy or with an initial MRI scan followed by a targeted biopsy if the MRI showed an abnormality.

The facts | Prostate cancer

The Precision Trial found that 71 (28 per cent) of the 252 men in the MRI arm of the study avoided the need for a subsequent biopsy.

Of those who needed a biopsy, the researchers detected clinically significant cancer in 95 (38 per cent) of the 252 men, compared to 64 (26 per cent) of the 248 men who received only the biopsy.

First author of the study, Dr Veeru Kasivisvanathan, from the UCL Division of Surgery and Interventional Science, said: "In men who need to have investigation for prostate cancer for the first time, Precision shows that using an MRI to identify suspected cancer in the prostate and performing a prostate biopsy targeted to the MRI information, leads to more cancers being diagnosed than the standard way that we have been performing prostate biopsy for the last 25 years."