According to best Miami urologist Dr. George Suarez, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is cutting back on the rate of false negatives when testing for prostate cancer and saving lives.
For most men, a prostate biopsy – which includes having a thin needle inserted through the rectum, urethra or perineum to poke the prostate gland any number of times – can create a very uncomfortable situation. And often times this type of testing can produce a false negative, which means that the patient has cancer that goes undetected.
According to your Miami urologist, although the technique has been used for a long time, there are some problems with this technique. It’s actually a random sampling resulting in false negatives because the doctor can’t see the prostate cancer. Actually, between 10 and 25 percent of prostate biopsies come back with a false negative, which is one of the reasons prostate cancer continues to be a leading cause of death in men.
The outcome of the biopsy fundamentally depends on the location of the cancer.
Whenever your Miami urologist inserts the needles, it can only go 17 millimeters deep, but if the cancer is located deeper, it won’t get samples.
There’s also an even bigger problem: late diagnosis, which provides the cancer with time to spread and become more aggressive, and ultimately it begins to attack the lymph nodes, bones and other areas of the body, thus becoming untreatable.
This is where magnetic resonance imaging comes into play through a new technique developed – over the last five to six years – called multiparametric MRI. This procedure provides specialized radiologists – such as your Miami urologist Dr. George Suarez – with the right equipment to create a visualization of the tumor makeup.
This procedure is allowing prostate cancer to be managed similarly to breast cancer. We’re heading in that direction where we can actually see the prostate cancer, which wasn’t possible before.
If you are interested in getting an MRI of prostate for detection of prostate cancer, call the office of best Miami urologist Dr. George Suarez.
