Pain during prostate biopsy

• Published in: The Lancet (British edition) Vol. 363; no. 9424; pp. 1840 - 1841
• Main Authors: Luscombe, Christopher J, Cooke, Peter W
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Elsevier Ltd 05-06-2004; Lancet; Elsevier Limited
• Subjects: Anesthetics, Local - administration & dosage; Antigens; Biological and medical sciences; Biopsy; Biopsy, Needle - adverse effects; Cancer screening; General aspects; Health risks; Humans; Infiltration; Investigations; Male; Medical sciences; Medical screening; Pain; Pain - etiology; Pain - prevention & control; Pain management; Pain Measurement; Prostate; Prostate - diagnostic imaging; Prostate - pathology; Prostate cancer; Prostatic Neoplasms - diagnosis; Ultrasonic imaging; Ultrasonography, Interventional; Urology; Europe; Human; Medicine; Pain; Biopsy; Male; Urogenital system; Prostate
• ISSN: 0140-6736; 1474-547X
• DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(04)16392-7

Successful pain control is essential in making TRUS-guided prostate biopsy tolerable, and yet even recently few urologists used pain-controlling techniques as standard.10 Pain control is particularly important in the setting of prostate cancer screening, which is widely practised across the world and is currently being investigated in Europe. In this context large numbers of patients are identified as being at high risk of cancer on the basis of an increased serum concentration of prostate-specific antigen, and require biopsy. An example of the demand for this procedure is reported by a European prostate-cancer screening trial11 that, with a cut-off for prostate-specific antigen of 3.0 ng/mL, had nearly a fifth of 7943 screened patients undergoing biopsy, with a cancer detection rate of 4.7%.