PSMA-targeted PET imaging for prostate cancer has shown to be a game-changing diagnostic technique for pinpointing prostate cancer tumors for more accurate treatment.
The new imaging technology can not only detect cancer lesions in the prostate but also cancer that has migrated to other parts of the body, which is commonly missed by current imaging techniques.
New Imaging Technique Can Help Men With Prostate Cancer Get A Better Diagnosis
As per experts, for any type of cancer, the diagnosis is the most important stage. An early diagnosis of the same may help one have quick treatment and go for the reversal of the medical condition.
The equipment employs a positron emission tomography scanner to detect a radioactive tracer that is particularly successful in detecting prostate cancer lesions throughout the body, allowing for better visualization and treatment selection.
The new imaging test PSMA PET/CT for primary prostate cancer staging prior to any initial therapy. When a patient is diagnosed with prostate cancer, and the biopsy reveals pathologic characteristics that suggest a possibility of metastasis to the lymph nodes or bones, the doctor must determine if cancer has gone beyond the prostate or not.
PSMA PET/CT is a whole-body imaging method that can do a one-time whole-body staging with good accuracy for finding and diagnosing metastases beyond the prostate. It’s the best imaging modality for prostate cancer whole-body staging so far.
The scan was used in patients who were undergoing initial staging before surgery. The primary goal of this study was to assess the scan’s ability to detect pelvic lymph node metastases. When cancer has not progressed to the bone or other organs, the pelvic lymph nodes are the initial site of metastasis outside of the prostate.
The only way to tell if a malignancy has spread to a pelvic lymph node is to examine it under a microscope (histopathology) after it has been surgically removed (lymph node dissection) with comparison to the reference gold standard: histopathological analgesia, the scan’s ability to detect some pelvic lymph nodes as having malignancy.
The first significant finding is that only 277 of the 764 individuals who had the scan ultimately underwent surgery. Following the scan, almost 64% of patients had a different treatment than surgery because the scan revealed some disease outside of the prostate, and the surgeon believed the treatment was no longer optimal.
It’s too late to hope for a cure from surgery alone if the disease has already spread outside the prostate. Other types of therapy, such as radiation and/or hormonal treatments, were chosen by physicians and/or patients.
In terms of the study’s major goal, they discovered that the scan’s sensitivity to detect pelvic lymph node metastases was 40%. This suggests that the test can detect pelvic lymph node disease in 40% of the patients who have it. It suggests that lesions are still too tiny to be discovered in 60% of patients (micrometastasis).
However, it outperforms any other imaging technology currently available. Because most of the patients in the trial who did not go to surgery had large lesions indicated by the scan but were not included in this analysis, the sensitivity would have been substantially greater if all 764 patients had received surgery.
Another key finding was the test’s high specificity: the scan was accurately negative in 95 percent of cases when a patient did not have pelvic lymph node metastases. So, if the scan shows something positive, it’s almost certainly prostate cancer and not something else.
When performing diagnostic testing, it’s critical to ensure that what you observe is exactly what you’re searching for. The specificity is very high (95%) and far superior to any other test.
