The study, published Sept. 25 in the New England Journal of Medicine, was conducted as a population-based trial starting in 2015, with the participants involving men ages 50-60 who underwent prostate-specific antigen screening. Men who had PSA levels of 3 nanograms per milliliter or higher were randomly assigned to either systematic biopsy or MRI-targeted biopsy.
The results showed that prostate cancer was detected in 2.8% of men in the MRI-targeted group compared to 4.5% in the systematic biopsy group. The risk of diagnosing clinically insignificant cancer was significantly lower in the MRI-targeted group, especially in repeat screenings.
Overall, omitting biopsy in patients with negative MRI results eliminated more than half of diagnoses of insignificant prostate cancer, according to the study.
