Prostate biopsy and optimization of cancer yield.

It is hard to imagine practicing urology and urologic pathologic today without prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and multiple thin-bore needle biopsies, yet these advances only became available in the past 18 years. The old large-bore needles provided considerably more tissue for the pathologist to examine, but suffered from compression artifact on the edges and a small but significant risk of needle tracking of cancer; both problems are circumvented with the smaller-bore biopsy needles used today.