August 9, 2016 – Targeted Biopsy

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:05 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Anchor lead: MRI is very useful when it comes to prostate biopsies, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Using magnetic resonance imaging to direct a prostate biopsy improves results, a recent Johns Hopkins study led by Ballantine Carter, a prostate cancer expert, has shown.

Carter: One way to think about it is a targeted biopsy that’s driven by magnetic resonance imaging. We looked at it over a two year period and the interesting thing that we found is that in people who are coming in biopsy naïve, they’ve never had a biopsy done, when we do the old fashioned type of biopsy and the new targeted approach, it turned out that the targeted approach identified 17% more aggressive prostate cancers than the old-fashioned approach, so we think this is an exciting new approach to performing prostate biopsies.   :32

Those men who are identified with more aggressive disease can then be treated more aggressively, while those whose disease isn’t as serious may be candidates for active surveillance, where they are watched carefully over time and only treated if the disease progresses.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.