The 20-core prostate biopsy as an initial strategy: impact on the detection of prostatic cancer.

Introduction: To increase the detection rate of prostate cancer in recent years, we examined the increase in the number of cores taken at initial prostate biopsy. We hypothesized that an increasing number of cores may undermine the accuracy of models predicting the presence of prostate cancer at initial biopsy in patients submitted to 20-core initial biopsy.

Methods: A total of 232 consecutive patients with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) between 4 and 20 ng/mL and/or abnormal digital rectal examination (DRE) underwent 12-core prostate biopsy protocol (group 1) or 20-core prostate biopsy protocol (group 2).