A Prospective Study Comparing Cancer Detection Rates of Transperineal Prostate Biopsies Performed by Junior Urologists Versus a Senior Consultant in a Real World-setting
Abstract Background: Prostate biopsy (PB) is a typical daily practice method for the diagnosis of prostate cancer (PCa). This study was to compare the PCa detection rate and peri- and post-operative complications of PB among three residents and a consultant.Methods: A total of 343 patients who underwent PB between August 2018 with July 2019 were involved in this study. Residents were systematically trained two weeks by the consultant for performing systemic biopsy (SB) and targeted biopsy (TB). And then, three residents and the consultant performed PB independently every quarter due to routine rotation in daily practice. The peri- and post-operative data was prospectively collected. The primary outcome and secondary outcome were to compare the PCa-detection rates and complications between residents and consultant, respectively. Results: There was no significant difference between the residents and consultant in terms of overall PCa-detection rates of SB, TB or further stratified by prostate specific antigen value, prostate imaging reporting and data system (PI-RADS) scores. We found the consultant had more TB cores compared with residents (175 cores versus 86 to 114 cores, P=0.043) and shorter procedural time versus residents (mean 16 min versus 19.7 to 20.1 min, P <0.001). The complication rate for consultant was 6.7%, and 5% to 8.2% for residents, respectively (P = 0.875).Conclusions: The residents could get a similar PCa detection and complication rates compared with the consultant after a two-week training. However, the residents still need more cases to shorten the time of biopsy procedure.