Prostate health gets less airtime than it should. Two things are worth understanding: the PSA blood test, and the prostate MRI that increasingly comes with it.
What PSA does and does not tell you
PSA is a protein that can rise with prostate cancer, but also with benign enlargement, infection, or even recent activity. A raised PSA is a prompt to look further, not a diagnosis in itself, which is why it is interpreted in context rather than in isolation.
Where MRI comes in
A prostate MRI gives a detailed picture that can help decide whether a biopsy is needed at all, and if so where to target it. Higher-field (3T) scanning helps here, and we run 3T at most of our centres.
The next step
Findings are discussed with a urologist, who puts them together with your PSA and history. Our prostate pathway walks through it.