AI could improve prostate cancer risk stratification
A research team from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have developed an AI tool that could improve prostate cancer prognostication and management, according to a recent European Urology study.
The American Cancer Society indicates that aside from skin cancer, prostate cancer is the most common cancer diagnosis for men in the United States, leading to an estimated 299,010 new cases and 35,250 deaths from the disease in 2024.
While the number of prostate cancer diagnoses declined significantly from 2007 to 2014, since then incidence rates have increased by roughly 3% overall and 5% for advanced-stage prostate cancers.
Improving outcomes for prostate cancer patients requires early interventions to slow disease prognosis and personalize treatments, but limitations in prognostication for certain patient subgroups make this difficult.
"About 60 percent of patients in the intermediate-risk group don't have a clear treatment plan, and around 30 to 50 percent see their cancer progress after the first round of therapy. We're finding that some of these patients are at higher risk for rapid progression, so identifying them early is critical," explained the study's co-corresponding author Ash Tewari, MD, MBBS, MCh, professor and chair of the Milton and Carroll Petrie department of urology at Icahn Mount Sinai, in a press release.
