By Victoria Allen for the Daily Mail
Published: 22:01 BST, 9 June 2019 | Updated: 22:31 BST, 9 June 2019
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A ten-minute scan in a supermarket car park could soon form the basis of the UK’s first prostate cancer screening programme.
The test for healthy men aged 55 to 60 detects the cancer before any symptoms appear, similar to mammograms offered to women for breast cancer.
It could offer men peace of mind for a decade, with one expert saying it might reassure them that they will never get prostate cancer.
The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan for prostate cancer has already been offered to 450 men, with another 350 set to be screened in London this summer as part of a University College London trial. If successful in larger trials, it could pave the way for healthy men to be screened nationally.
The new test for healthy men aged 55 to 60 detects the cancer before any symptoms appear, similar to mammograms offered to women for breast cancer
The Daily Mail has campaigned to end needless prostate cancer deaths through better diagnosis. In Britain, more than 47,000 men a year are diagnosed with prostate cancer, one in eight men will get it, and more than 11,000 die from it every year.
The ten-minute MRI scan could prevent thousands of men ‘dying of embarrassment’ by picking up cancer before the urinary and sexual problems which many put off discussing with a GP until it is too late.
Putting men in an MRI machine to search for tiny tumour particles is believed to be more reliable than the current blood test or an uncomfortable internal examination.
Prostate tumours are so slow-growing that one scan in middle age could show a man will never die of the cancer, according to Professor Mark Emberton, who is leading the UCL trials and believes a national screening programme could go ahead in five to ten years. He said MRI could ‘revolutionise’ diagnosis, adding: ‘The trials being done are a world-first and MRI scans are the most important development in prostate cancer diagnosis for 50 years.
The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan for prostate cancer has already been offered to 450 men, with another 350 set to be screened in London this summer as part of a University College London trial
‘If we show this works, we hope policy-makers will examine the evidence and look at screening for all men aged 55 to 60. MRIs are getting cheaper, quicker and simpler, which means they will not need to be done in a hospital. It is quite possible for MRIs to be done in supermarket car parks and to have one in every major town.’
He went on: ‘We hope 90 per cent of all men would get a clean bill of health as a result of having a negative MRI. Many
