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.
Malecare support group members gettin... - Prostate Cancer A...
Malecare support group members getting a second opinion on all imaging including MRI's
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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