Is The Prostate Cancer Biopsy An Effective Diagnostic Tool?

by: Donald Saunders

Although there are several tests which may be performed when the presence of prostate cancer is suspected, the only sure way to detect the condition is the prostate biopsy. But precisely how effective is the biopsy at confirming this particular condition?

In the United States alone each year there are in the region of one million prostate biopsies carried out of which about 25 percent show the presence of cancer. Of the remaining 75 percent of biopsies however roughly 33 percent also result in false negative results. This means that about 25 percent of all those men being given a prostate biopsy are cleared by this test, despite the fact that they have prostate cancer.

At first sight therefore it might appear that the biopsy is not a very good test but these results do not demonstrate that there is anything wrong with the prostate biopsy procedure as a means of identifying the presence of cancer. What it does clearly mean however is that there is a need to spot those individuals who, in spite of returning a negative result, are nonetheless at high risk from cancer and should therefore have a second follow-up biopsy.

The difficulty is that until very recently there has been no easy method of identifying those patients at risk. Fortunately, a recent study of over 500 individuals being investigated for prostate cancer could now provide a solution.

All of the men taking part in the study had previously had a negative biopsy result but the researchers found that when they looked at the patient's prostate specific antigen test results and these were adjusted to take account of the size of the prostate they were able to identify those individuals who were more likely to receive a positive result on a follow-up biopsy.

The researchers also found that patients with a Gleeson score of 7 or higher were at greater risk from life-threatening cancer and were again more likely to receive a positive result on a second biopsy. The Gleeson score runs on a scale from 2 to 10 and the score is calculated from a microscopic investigation of the biopsy tissue. Low scores point to a cancer with a relatively low risk of spread and high scores point to a cancer which is much more likely to spread.

There are several biopsy procedures used nowadays but perhaps the most frequently performed procedure is known as the core needle biopsy. In this case a number of tiny samples of tissue are removed from different areas of the prostrate using a biopsy gun which shoots a needle into the chosen section to remove the sample in just a fraction of a second. The samples collected are then sent off for microscopic examination to find out whether cancer is present and, if it is, to determine precisely how much of the prostate is affected.

A prostate biopsy is not a cheap procedure and is a test which can also be relatively worrying for the patient. It is sometimes also a quite painful test which may involve bleeding and a risk of infection. Consequently it is important to identify those individuals for whom a follow-up biopsy would be desirable and to reduce the number of avoidable follow-up biopsies being performed every year.

ProstateProblemCenter.com provides information on everything from the prostate biopsy to the therapeutic use of milking the prostate gland

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