Whole Body MRI With DWI for Monitoring Patients Treated for Testicular Cancer Stage II-III

Detailed Summary

Testicular cancer (TC) affects approx. 1% of Danish men and is the most common cancer in men aged 15-35 years. It is the most curable solid cancer type with a 5-year survival rate of 90-95%. Staging and follow-up of these patients involve 5-10 CT scans of each patient, imposing a significant radiation burden: Approx. 3-5 of the 300 Danish patients presenting with TC each year are expected to develop a radiation-induced secondary cancer, half of which are expected to be fatal. MRI is rapidly developing and new WB-MRI can cover large parts of the body in a clinically realistic scan time. With this development, it is within reach to nearly eliminate the radiation burden by substituting the large amount of CT scans with MRI scans in TC. MRI is without any known risk of long-term side effects. Despite this, limited data exist on MRI used in follow-up of TC. At Aarhus University Hospital, we introduced MRI for the follow-up of TC stage I in 2008. We now want to evaluate the results of in this unique cohort of patients and evaluate in a prospective trial if the newest WB-MRI techniques can replace CT in patients with TC stage II-IV. To the best of our knowledge, no study has investigated how much it is possible to reduce the MRI scan time in patients with TC in order to develop a clinically realistic scan time while still maintaining an acceptable uncompromised diagnostic accuracy. The overall aim of this study is to reduce the risk of radiation-induced secondary cancers in patients operated diagnosed with TC by replacing CT as a follow-up imaging method with non-ionizing WB-MRI including DWI. We have these specific aims: * To study the ability of WB-MRI with DWI to replace standard CT in TC stage II-III patients in a prospective non-inferiority study. * To evaluate if it is possible to reduce scan time in the WB-MRI protocols in the TC stage II-III group while maintaining sufficient diagnostic accuracy in order to improve clinical application of the techniques.

Study Details

Timeline

Interventions