Diagnostic value of transrectal ultrasonography in prostatic cancer

The high frequency endocavitary sectorial probe developed by the authors has been used for the evaluation of transrectal ultrasonography as a diagnostic method for prostatic cancer. A double-blind study was conducted with retrospective interpretation of the ultrasonographic documents obtained from a series of 213 patients. Histological control was available in 132 patients, including 42 patients with cancer. The specificity for the diagnosis of cancer (number of true negatives/number of patients without cancer) was 79%, while the sensitivity (number of true positives/number of cancers) was only 48%. In the second phase of the study, ultrasound guided prostatic needle biopsy was performed in a series of 72 patients with either prostatic induration without a nodule (47 cases) or with a prostatic nodule (25 cases). The histological material was of good quality and no complications were recorded. However, the ten cancers diagnosed (5 from each group) could not be clearly distinguished ultrasonographically from other examinations of adenoma, prostatitis or normal prostate.