Patient Focus Group Meeting for the Smart Target Trials
Background information
Rather surprisingly, early prostate cancer is managed without knowing where the cancer is
within the prostate. This leads to some important cancers being missed and many
unimportant cancers being detected. To compensate, all treatments are directed to the
prostate – not the cancer. This results in the side-effects that are so familiar.
If surgeons are provided with information on the location of the cancer, prostate cancer
care will be transformed. Imaging, in the form of MRI, can detect the prostate cancers
that are harmful. The challenge lies in getting the information from the MRI to the
surgeons doing the biopsies and the treatments.
SmartTarget is computer software that has been developed by the Centre for Medical
Image Computing (CMIC) at University College London (UCL) to enable targeted prostate
biopsies.
Theoretically, this allows qualified surgeons to carry out fewer biopsies, confident that
they are “hitting” the intended area – “target”. This potentially leads to fewer side effects
for the patient, shorter procedure times, fewer pathology specimens, and ultimately less
cost to the NHS.
These studies aim to find out whether “SmartTarget” technology can help with both the
diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer.
We are interested in the opinion of prostate cancer patients.