The first 100 patients of the Multicentre MBC Trial, of which A/Prof Thompson is the chief investigator, has been completed. Results will be formally presented at upcoming conferences and published in a peer-reviewed journal, but the results clearly show the benefit of MRI, which has a >90% sensitivity/ negative predictive value at ruling out muscle invasive cancer, and a strong specificity/ positive predictive value at detecting early muscle invasive cancer.
Therefore, MRI can be a valuable tool in planning subsequent TURBT in patients with a bladder mass, targeting the resection at the site of greatest suspicion of invasion, and accurately staging the cancer to guide the correct treatment choice. This has been a problem historically in bladder cancer, wherein some patients have muscle invasive cancer missed until it is too late, whilst others undergo unnecessary radical treatment in the absence of muscle invasive cancer.
A/Prof Thompson and his research team will continue the trial to expand numbers and analyse the data deeply to gain further insights. They will also assess the utility of a new form of MRI imaging called diffusion kurtosis, which may improve grading, prognosis and treatment choice in bladder cancer assessment.