[Real time elastography in the diagnosis of prostate cancer: comparison of preoperative imaging and histology after radical prostatectomy].

Introduction: Conventional grey scale ultrasound has only limited sensitivity and specificity in the detection of prostate cancer. Real time elastography is a promising modality to overcome this problem. The goal of the current study was an evaluation of real time elastography for the correct detection of prostate cancer lesions in prostatectomy specimens.
Patients and Methods: Between 11/2008 and 05/2009, 28 patients diagnosed with prostate cancer and scheduled for radical prostatectomy underwent real time elastography before radical prostatectomy. Elastography was performed using a Hitachi(®) EUB 7500 ultrasound machine with a V53W rectal probe at 7,5MHz by one operator. During the exam, each prostate was partitioned into 12 sectors (anterior, posterior, left, right, base, middle gland, apex). Suspect zones were identified and filed depending on their localization. The prostatectomy specimens were processed according to the Stanford protocol in 3-5mm step sections. The preoperative and postoperative results regarding tumor localization were compared.
Results: In total, 88 cancer lesions could be identified in the prostatectomy specimen, where 125 sectors were positive for a total of 336 sectors evaluated. Based on elastography 134 suspicious sectors were identified. For real time elastography, the sensitivity and specificity for correct cancer identification were 73.4 and 79.0 %, respectively. The negative and positive predictive value was 83.4 and 67.4 %, respectively. Accuracy for correct identification of the tumor lesion was 76.5 %.
Conclusion: In this study, real time elastography showed high accuracy in the identification of prostate cancer lesions in the prostate. Routine use of elastography could improve the diagnosis of prostate cancer, as well as the therapeutic management.
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