Bi-Parametric Prostate MR Helps Detect Clinically Significant Prostate Cancer

Bi-parametric prostate MR (bp-MR) aids in detection of clinically significant prostate cancer (PCa), according to a study published in the European Journal of Radiology. Contrary to findings in the recent literature, PSA-D does not appear to significantly improve its diagnostic performance.

Researchers from Italy retrospectively analyzed 334 patients to evaluate the diagnostic performance of bp-MR, PSA-density (PSA-D) and their combination in biopsy-naïve patients.

All patients had undergone prostate MR on a 3T scanner. A total of 114 patients who underwent TRUS-biopsy within 30 days following MR with no previous prostate biopsies were included in the results. The researchers assessed three scenarios:

• Detection of lesions independently of ISUP score (ISUP ≥ 1)
• Detection of both intermediate and clinically significant lesions (ISUP ≥ 2)
• Detection of clinically significant lesions alone (ISUP ≥ 3).

The results showed that in all evaluated scenarios, bp-MR showed a significantly higher predictive power (AUC = 0.87 to 0.95) compared to the performance of PSA-D (AUC = 0.73 to 0.79), while their combination (AUC = 0.91 to 0.95) showed no statistically significant improvement compared to bp-MR alone.

The researchers concluded their results confirmed that bp-MR is a powerful tool in detection of clinically significant PCa. They also noted that contrary to findings in the recent literature, PSA-D does not appear to significantly improve its diagnostic performance.