DO ALL MEN WHO HAVE CANCER ON NEEDLE BIOPSIES NEED AGGRESSIVE THERAPY?
Posted by adminOne man had a biopsy that was considered negative by one pathologist. His urologist sent it to this pathologist for a second opinion. “There were about four glands of cancer. We called it cancer, he had his prostate out, and there was tumor all over.” But for every such patient, there’s another man who turns out to have very little cancer.
Which brings us to one very tough question: Do all men who have cancer on needle biopsies need aggressive therapy? Again, the problem lies in our ability to differentiate between harmless and malevolent cancer. “If it were my family member,” the pathologist confesses, “I wouldn’t want to take the chance.”
But eventually, the goal is not to treat all prostate cancers, but to predict which cancers are going to turn serious, and treat these tumors aggressively. And predict which cancers will remain indolent, and monitor them closely.
Until very recently, the technology that made early biopsy possible also made these judgment calls much tougher—pathologists had trouble correlating the amount of cancer on the needle with the amount of cancer in the entire prostate. But now, research from Johns Hopkins promises to shed fresh light— to make needle biopsy findings much more helpful in determining a man’s course of treatment.
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