New standards on how doctors should evaluate MRI scans to confirm a diagnosis of prostate cancer have been published online on 1 October in European Urology.
The new standards are the result of a five-year project by the European Society of Urogenital Radiology (ESUR), the American College of Radiology (ACR), and the AdMeTech Foundation. A draft was first released in December 2014, with the final version issued this month.
The new procedures are designed to allow radiologists to identify up to 13% more life-threatening tumors than current procedures, with a goal to reduce the overdiagnosis of insignificant cancers by as much as 89%.
The standards also detail the use of multiparametric prostate MRI, which has shown in recent studies to improve the recognition and exclusion of the most dangerous tumors so fewer men may undergo biopsy. When they must undergo the procedure, it is more likely to identify clinically significant cancers.
The guidelines cover the use of the Prostate Imaging and Reporting and Data System (PI-RADS) to facilitate improvements in the diagnosis of intermediate- to high-grade cancers. A new version, called PI-RADS version 2, updates and simplifies how multiparametric MRI scans are acquired, interpreted, and reported, and it provides instructions so multiparametric MRI can be standardized.
