In American men, prostate cancer is only behind skin cancer as the most common form of cancer. Statistics showed in the U.S. there were about 164,690 new diagnoses of prostate cancer and about 29,430 death from prostate cancer in 2018. In their lifetime 1-9 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, and 1 in 41 of those diagnosed will succumb to complications related to the disease. The five-year survival rate for prostate cancer patients falls to 29% when prostate cancer metastasizes and spreads through the body. This staggering decline in survival rate highlights the serious disadvantages the NCCN recommended treatments have when trying to treat prostate cancer that has spread, become treatment-resistant, and recurrent.

Prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, is a protein produced by normal, as well as malignant, cells of the prostate gland.

PROSTATE IMAGING: a new horizon in early prostate cancer detection and treatment

Recent advances in MRI, including Mp-MRI (“Multi-parametric” testing using a 3T scanner)imaging, have changed everything. The latest generation of MRI machines called 3 Tesla, or 3T machines, scan at a much higher resolution than the earlier machines. They enable radiologists to see all but the tiniest tumors. The tumors that they can’t see almost certainly don’t matter. MRI scanning for prostate cancer could also help a quarter of a million men, maybe up to half a million men a year, to avoid an unnecessary biopsy if the MRI is negative.