Screening for prostate cancer may not reduce mortality

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

A comparison study suggests that screening for prostate cancer does not reduce a man's risk of dying from the disease.
Prostate specific antigen (PSA) testing is often carried out as a screen to pick up cases of prostate cancer early. It's hoped this might reduce the mortality from the disease, but the evidence for this has, so far, been lacking. Now researchers at the Veterans Affairs Connecticut Healthcare System and elsewhere report a new study that seems to cast further doubt upon the value of PSA screening.

They compared a group of 501 men who died of prostate cancer by the end of 1999 with a matched group of 501 men who did not have the disease. They found that 14 per cent of those who had died had previously had PSA screening, compared with 13 per cent of those who did not have the disease. In other words, PSA screening appears not to make any difference to the chance of surviving prostate cancer. It should not, therefore, be offered routinely. Where it is done, the uncertainty surrounding screening should be carefully explained to the patient as part of informed decision making.

Source
Archives of Internal Medicine 9th January 2005 Volume 166 pages 38-43

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