NHS trial success for prostate cancer diagnosis

NHS England has said that a ‘world-leading’ programme to cut prostate cancer diagnosis times from six weeks to a matter of days will be trialled.

A new ‘one-stop’ service will be rolled-out at three west London hospitals, where a new MRI scan will provide higher quality imagery and give up to 40 per cent of patients a same day diagnosis. The NHS claims the technique virtually eliminates the threat of sepsis.

The usual process in most other hospitals is an MRI scan followed by a biopsy where around a dozen samples may have to be taken with a needle through the rectum, in order to locate suspect growths on the prostate. The new technique uses highly detailed ‘multi-parametric’ MRI – mpMRI – scans which provide much higher quality imagery.

Being used at Charing Cross Hospital, Epsom Hospital and Queen Mary's Hospital in Roehampton, it is hoped that approximately 5,000 men will be tested over the next two years.

Hashim Ahmed, chairman of urology at Imperial College London, said: "Fast access to high-quality prostate MRI allows many men to avoid invasive biopsies as well as allowing precision biopsy in those men requiring it to find high risk tumours much earlier. What we are hoping to do is show the NHS that this can be done, that it can be done cost-effectively and that we can improve the outcomes for men in a much better way than we were doing."