A negative multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging finding does not guarantee the absence of significant cancer among biopsy-proven prostate cancer patients: a real-life clinical experience.

PURPOSE: We analyzed the data of consecutive patients who had preoperative multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) and underwent radical prostatectomy (RP) to evaluate the actual performance of mpMRI among biopsy-proven prostate cancer (PCa) patients in predicting favorable pathology in the real-life clinical setting. METHODS: Among a total 730 biopsy-proven PCa patients underwent RP, the preoperative mpMRIs of 534 patients were positive, demonstrating one or more PI-RADs V2 grade ≥ 2 lesion(s). Other 196 mpMRIs were classified as negative, without any suspicious lesion. Pathology was classified to be unfavorable when showing Gleason score (GS) 4/5 or pT3/N1 features. Significant cancer was defined as non-organ-confined, GS 4/5, or cancer volume of ≥ 0.5 mL. RESULTS: Among a total 196 negative preoperative mpMRI patients, final RP pathology showed that 20 (10.2%) had pT3 disease and 2 (1.0%) had pN1 disease. Regarding the pathologic Gleason score, 117 (59.7%) had GS 3 + 4 and 44 (22.4%) had GS ≥ 4 + 3. The rate of a favorable PCa and an insignificant cancer was as low as 14.3% and 10.2%. Even among only the 101 D'Amico low-risk patients with negative MRI, the rates of a favorable pathology and an insignificant cancer were only 18.2% and 12.7%. The sensitivity, specificity, positive, and negative predictive value of mpMRI to predict a significant cancer were 74.3%, 45.5%, 95.5%, and 10.2%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: In the real-life clinical setting, mpMRI demonstrated limited performance in the prediction of favorable and insignificant prostate cancer as a negative mpMRI could not guarantee the absence of unfavorable pathology among PCa patients.