Malecare support group members getting a second opinion on all imaging including MRI's

[Darryl]

Sometime around 2002, Malecare started telling our support group members to consider getting a second opinion on their biopsy from a pathologist at a different/second facility. This seemed a no-brainer common sense thing to do (if you could afford it). Today, after several years of thought and conversation with our members, we are telling Malecare support group members to consider getting a second opinion on all imaging including MRI's.

[Tall_Allen]

I never recommend a second opinion on a biopsy from just another facility. There is only ONE facility I recommend: Epstein's lab at Johns Hopkins. He is the Gold Standard, and everyone acknowledges his reading as definitive. If one messes around with some random pathologist, you are left in the quandary that Dr.A says it's X and Dr.B says it's Y - which is right?

Similarly, mpMRIs are frequently misread (I think that's what you meant when you wrote "MRI"). There is huge inter-observer variability among radiologists depending on their level of expertise. It is not so much a "second" opinion as getting a good reading at all. The patient should look at the radiologist's credentials first. Here's my list of qualified mpMRI radiologists in North America- they are the authors of PIRADS 2.0:

Jeffrey C. Weinreb: Yale

Peter L. Choyke, Baris Turkbey: NIH

Masoom A. Haider: Sunnybrook, Toronto

Katarzyna J. Macura: Johns Hopkins

Daniel Margolis: Weill Cornell

Mitchell D. Schnall: UOP

Clare M. Tempany: Harvard

Sadna Verma: U of Cincinnati

Aytekin Oto: U of Chicago

Alberto Vargas: MSK

Alexander Kagan: Mt. Sinai