New Prostate Cancer Screening Process Seen as Very Promising

You’ve just been diagnosed with prostate cancer. But what sets you apart from patients diagnosed earlier is a new ultrasound procedure that can provide more meaningful information to doctors who are treating you.

Advanced Medical Diagnostics SA/NV (AMD), a privately held company that has developed HistoScanning™, the technology that can do this, today announced a very strong incentive for using it,  with the publication of the final results from the open phase of the prospective, multi-centre and pan-European clinical study evaluating the Prostate HistoScanning application, according to a company press release.

This new type of scan for prostate cancer had a 91 percent degree of accuracy for finding lesions that were greater than 0.20cc in volume, according to the press release. “More detailed analysis by prostate sextant examined the ability of Prostate HistoScanning not only to detect and size, but also to accurately locate, significant lesions and indicates that Prostate HistoScanning(TM) shows a sensitivity of 90 percent and a specificity of 72 percent for the localization of prostate cancer foci within the 162 sextants,” the press release reported.

HistoScanning™ is a tissue characterization screening process that uses ultrasound data to improve doctors’ ability to detect cancerous cells, or, as the company says, “visual reassurance for decision- making.”

The results of the study “showed a strong correlation between the total cancer volume detected in each of the 27 glands by Prostate HistoScanning™ as compared to histopathology,” according to the press release.

The publication of the study in the British Journal of Urology International marks the end of the "un-blinded" or "open" phase of the study, which assessed the relationship between the size and location of lesions detected with prostate HistoScanning™ and those found through histopathology of the prostate gland after being removed surgically, the press release said.

"We are delighted that the performance of Prostate HistoScanning™ has been confirmed in this carefully executed study. In parallel, we have been progressing with the final and "blind" phase of this study. We are pleased to announce that it is in its last stages of recruitment and we look forward to seeing the initial results early in 2012." said Dr. Dror Nir, managing director, AMD, in the press release.