Half of prostate cancer cases may be missed
Experts say that thousands of patients are being put at unnecessary risk because most NHS hospitals are using outdated and inaccurate techniques.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, affecting 40,000 people a year and causing 10,000 deaths. One in eight men will develop the disease within their lifetime.
The study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and University College London suggests that as many as half of cases where patients have “significant” levels of prostate cancer could be being missed during standard biopsy procedures.
Thousands more men may be wrongly diagnosed as having cancer which requires major treatment, such as surgery or radiotherapy, the researchers found.
In most British hospitals, men with suspected prostate cancer automatically undergo a biopsy to remove and examine tissue in an attempt to establish whether disease is present.