A new study following a decade-long campaign to reduce imaging for low-risk prostate cancer patients in Sweden suggests that the United States could eliminate many unnecessary scans by following the Scandinavian country's example of encouraging physicians to follow current imaging guidelines.
Researchers at NYU Langone in New York City, Uppsala University & Karolinska Institute in Sweden and Sloane-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City examined approximately ten years of prostate cancer records from 100,000 Swedish patients. During the ten year period, unnecessary imaging decreased to 3 percent, down from 45 percent, following the implementation of a campaign involving imaging guideline reminders and presentations on local imaging statistics within hospitals.
Cancer scans for metastatic tumors detection in low-risk prostate patients in the United States are discouraged in policy, but physicians have not yet adopted the guidelines in practice. One of the study's lead authors found in a preliminary study that inappropriate prostate imaging occurs between 22 and 62 percent of the time.
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