Medical Thoracoscopy Not the Only Good Way to Biopsy Complex Pleural Effusion
For the diagnosis of people with pleural effusion, an initial image-assisted Abrams needle biopsy (IA-ANPB) can match medical thoracoscopy (MT) in diagnostic accuracy in some cases, a small randomized controlled trial found. IA-ANPB diagnosis had a sensitivity of just 69.7% with a negative likelihood ratio of 0.30 in patients with pleural effusion only, underperforming when […]
Study Tests Office-Based Transperineal Approach to Prostate Biopsies
A multicenter randomized trial compared transperineal prostate biopsy without antibiotic prophylaxis versus transrectal biopsy with targeted prophylaxis, examining infections, prostate cancer detection, pain, and other measures. The findings were presented at the recent Genitourinary Cancers Symposium. In this exclusive MedPage Today video, investigator Jim C. Hu, MD, of Weill Cornell Medicine/NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in New York […]
Liquid Biopsy Has Mixed Performance for Predicting Colon Cancer Outcomes
SAN FRANCISCO — In separate studies, liquid biopsy produced mixed results for guiding colon cancer treatment. Adjuvant chemotherapy guided by postoperative circulating tumor (ct) DNA did not lead to higher rates of DNA clearance as compared with patients who did not get chemotherapy. However, ctDNA did show promise for identifying patients with molecular residual disease […]
Opinion | Charting the Course: From Young Adult Leukemia Patient to Oncologist
Rosenthal is a lymphoma specialist. “Would you like to have a bone marrow biopsy today or tomorrow?” These are the only words I remember coming from the oncologist who I had just met in the emergency department (ED). I was in my second year of medical school and just 24 years old when I was […]
‘Game Changer’ in NASH: Resmetirom Hits Endpoints in Pivotal Study
VIENNA — The investigational agent resmetirom resolved liver biopsy findings in nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) more often than placebo, according to the phase III MAESTRO-NASH trial. While 10% of placebo patients achieved resolution of inflammation, ballooning, and disease activity, the rate was 26% among people treated with the 80-mg dose of resmetirom and 30% with the […]
MRI-Targeted Biopsy for Prostate Cancer Reduces Risk of Overdiagnosis
Excluding systematic biopsy in favor of MRI-targeted biopsy in men with elevated prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels reduced the probability of detecting clinically insignificant cancers, but at the risk of missing some clinically significant cancers and delaying their diagnosis, the randomized GÖTEBORG-2 trial from Sweden showed. Among nearly 18,000 participants, 0.6% of men who underwent MRI-targeted […]
Novel Blood-Based Test Could Bolster MRI-Based Prostate Cancer Screening
Addition of a novel blood test to MRI-targeted biopsy in prostate cancer screening decreased overdetection while maintaining the ability to detect clinically significant cancer, Swedish researchers reported. They found that use of the test — called Stockholm3 — in a screening setting where MRI and targeted biopsies were used, performed at least as well as […]
Support for MRI-Targeted Biopsy in Prostate Cancer Screening
A prostate cancer screening strategy using MRI with targeted and standard biopsy reduced the detection of clinically insignificant cancers as well as unnecessary biopsies, researchers reported. Such an approach was also as effective as a standard biopsy strategy in detecting clinically significant cancers, said Tobias Nordstrom, MD, PhD, of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, in […]