HJAR Jul/Aug 2022

48 JUL / AUG 2022 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS DIALOGUE COLUMN UROLOGY THE PAST DECADE has brought us one breakthrough after another in the treatment of prostate cancer. This is truly a blessing for men and their families, but it is also a bless- ing for those of us who spend our lives and careers fighting this disease. Prostate cancer is themost common cancer inmen in the U.S., with around 250,000 new diagnoses yearly and around 30,000men succumbing to the disease annually. The odds of a man being diagnosed in his lifetime are about one in seven. Diagnosed early, prostate cancer is 99% curable. Unfortunately, not enoughmen get screening exams, which leads to more advanced, incurable cases. Part of the problem in screeningmen, and frankly in getting men to be screened, has anatomy. While the technology has been around for a few decades, it is only in the past few years that it has been better devel- oped for the diagnosis of prostate cancer. It is also useful in determining who to treat, how to treat, and when to treat. An even further development has been the ability to “fuse”the image from theMRI to the ultrasound, which can then guide a needle directly into a suspi- cious area during a biopsy rather than the traditional randombiopsy method. MRI has truly been a breakthrough in the detection of prostate cancer as well as the management of active surveillance. Until 2008, urologists had no diagnostic tools or therapeutic weapons for men with more advanced cases of prostate cancer. We been the lack of good testing to find cancer as well as determining what to do with it once found. While many men opt to forgo screen- ing because a third of cases may never need to be treated, the problem is that until we know there is cancer in the first place, it is impossible to determine whether or not it re- quires treatment or can simply be observed. With newer blood tests and genomic testing available, we can better work through this decision with fewer unnecessary tests and treatments. One of the other essential tools is MRI. Prior to this, we had no tools to glimpse an image of the prostate and try to differen- tiate between benign and suspicious tissue. MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) uses magnetic fields to create an image of our Advanced Imaging: Breakthroughs in Prostate Cancer Detection & Treatment