Tests for prostate cancer may be incorrectly giving the all-clear to up to 50 per cent of men who have the disease, according to a study.
Experts believe thousands of patients with the disease could be missed every year because the standard biopsy techniques used at most NHS hospitals are flawed.
And thousands more perfectly healthy people could be wrongly diagnosed with the disease and undergoing needless radiotherapy or surgery, according to a study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and University College London.
Experts say MRI and ultrasound scans give more accurate diagnoses of prostate cancer
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, affecting 40,000 British men a year and killing 10,000.
Most NHS hospitals automatically use biopsies for men with suspected prostate cancer, removing and examining tissue in an attempt to establish whether the disease is present.
More than 100,000 of these ‘blind’ biopsies are carried out every year – but experts say the procedures are inaccurate and risky.
They are instead calling for less invasive – but far more expensive – MRI and ultrasound scans to be used first, which they say could immediately and reliably give the all-clear to men without the disease, and allow doctors to carry out more accurate biopsies by pinpointing the area where a tumour is suspected.
Professor Mark Emberton, of the University College London, told the Daily Telegraph: ‘There is no other organ of the body where we carry out random “blind” biopsies without knowing where we are looking.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, affecting 40,000 British men a year and killing 10,000 (file photo)
‘At UCLH we have been using MRI, followed by a guided biopsy for several years, but there are only a handful of hospitals in this country which do this, and that needs to change.’
The health economists who carried out the Wellcome Trust-funded study calculated that using the alternative procedure could mean a quarter of patients are given the all-clear without having a biopsy.
For every 1,000 men with suspected cancer, 250 men could have been reassured after a scan.
Of 500 of the cases in which significant disease was present, just 50 per cent were detected during the traditional biopsy, compared with 68 per cent using the MRI-guided technique.
One in 20 of those undergoing the traditional biopsy were wrongly found to have significant disease levels.
Using the MRI-guided technique, around half as many men were given a wrong diagnosis.
Sarah Willis, a health economist from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: ‘These findings suggest that the use of MRI and ultrasound not only detects far more cases, but leads to fewer false positives, in which significant disease is wrongly diagnosed.’
Dr Kate Holmes, head of research at Prostate Cancer UK, said: ‘This early data suggests that giving men an MRI scan before a biopsy may put clinicians in a better position to tailor investigations and treatments further down the line.
'However, further research is necessary before we will know the true value of this method.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2342096/Tests-prostate-cancer-clear-HALF-men-actually-disease.html#ixzz2WUhNLALZ
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