Prostate Cancer Tests Not Accurate Enough

Prostate cancer in some men is being allowed to progress to a dangerous stage because tests are not accurate enough, according to the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute.

The study, published in the British Journal of Cancer, suggest that men are being given false hopes after it found that more than half of a group of men whose tumours were classified as slow-growing turned out later to be a serious form of the disease.

Each year around 41,700 men in the UK are diagnosed with this cancer and 10,800 of them die from the illness.

The findings generate doubts on a widely used strategy of “active surveillance” after it was found that some of the test fail to precisely rate how dangerous the cancer could be.

Biopsy samples examined under a microscope are used to rate how aggressive a prostate cancer is, referring to its grade and how far it has spread.

For the research the Cambridge scientists compared the staging and grading of more than 800 men' s cancers before and after they had surgery to remove their prostate, and they found that out of 415 of patients whose cancer had been classified as slow-growing and confined to the prostate, just over a quarter (209) were found to have a more aggressive disease than originally thought, and 131 had cancers that had spread beyond the prostate gland.

Professor Malcolm Mason, Cancer Research UK's prostate cancer specialist, said: "We need better methods of assigning a grade and stage so that no man has to unnecessarily undergo treatment, while at the same time making sure we detect and treat the cancers that really need it."

(CVS/MH)