Dr Thompson and colleagues at the St George Hospital Uro-Oncology Research Unit together with I-MED Radiology and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) are proud to announce that their latest research paper has been accepted for publication in BMC Urology in March 2021.
The paper, titled “The diagnostic utility of diffusion weighted MRI imaging and ADC ratio to distinguish benign from malignant renal masses” demonstrates how changes in water movement through tissues can be used on MRI to give urologists important clues as to whether a solid ‘lump’ or ‘mass’ in the kidney is either benign (not cancerous) or malignant (cancerous with the potential to spread throughout the body). Malignant kidney cancers require prompt removal to avoid the risk of spread and death, whilst benign masses usually require no treatment at all.
Traditional scans such as CT and Ultrasound are unreliable at differentiating cancers from benign lumps in the kidney, thus many thousands of people globally each year undergo unnecessary surgery to remove part or all of a kidney for what turns out to be a benign mass.
This study builds upon another recently published study by Dr Thompson and colleagues demonstrating that microscopic fat analysis can also help differentiate benign from cancerous lumps in the kidney.
An MRI is not a single scan but rather a combination of 4-6 different scans in one. When all these scans are combined, Dr Thompson and colleagues, led by MRI radiologist Dr Suresh Da Silva, believe that one day soon we will be able to reliably identify cancers and thus spare those with a benign lump the unnecessary harm of having a kidney removed.
Dr Thompson and colleagues have submitted and are hoping to publish a third paper in this area in the near future, so watch this space!