Should MRI be used to assess possible prostate cancer before a biopsy is done? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Magnetic resonance imaging or MRI is sometimes used to examine the prostate gland when cancer is suspected and a biopsy is being considered. Now a new study demonstrates its benefits. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, explains.

Nelson: The advantage to the MRI was that there were a significant number of men, a third of them, that you didn’t need to biopsy at all, so that’s an advantage. The difficulties now are the availability of the instrumentation and eyes to examine it. The worry you sometimes get is that are the people who do only the examining of prostates through magnetic resonance imaging all day long every day, are they better at it than people who are more deployed across the country who have to look at many different things? And I think the answer to that is probably yes.  :30

Nelson says for now, men in this situation can ask about having an MRI as well as the volume a center does in this specific application. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.