experts have revealed they can improve diagnosis through sophisticated imaging techniques instead of invasive biopsies.
Fifty Australian men are diagnosed with prostate cancer each day and by using new scans health workers are hoping to diagnose the cancer more quickly or rule out the disease. The PSMA-PET is a scan where a patient is injected with a small dose of radiation that binds to prostate cancer cells, which then light up on a screen."It's actually targeted radiation, it finds the cancer cell by a small protein that then binds to a receptor on the cancer cell surface itself, it's very clever," Professor Louise Emmett at St Vincent's Hospital said.
"We were missing 17 per cent of significant malignancies with the MRI in the study, but it went down to just three per cent when we combined PSMA and MRI," Professor Emmett said."In the primary trial itself we found we cold reduce, safely reduce the number of biopsies undertaken by 20 per cent," Professor Emmett said."Biopsies are invasive, they require anaesthetic, there's a lot of needles in a very sensitive area of your body.
For patients like 55-year-old Diego Villar who had a suspicious blood test, the new approach has proved a more efficient and effective way to find out his results.Continue reading