Prostate screening has no benefit

[Celebration]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12911174

Prostate cancer screening does not save lives, according to a 20-year study, published in the British Medical Journal.

..............(snip)......................

Nearly 1,500 men were randomly chosen to be screened every three years between 1987 and 1996. The first two tests were performed by digital rectal examination and then by prostate specific antigen testing.

The report concludes: "After 20 years of follow-up, the rate of death from prostate cancer did not differ significantly between men in the screening group and those in the control group."

...........snip.............

"However, this previous trial showed that screening can lead to many men undergoing unnecessary treatment for a harmless prostate cancer. The Prostate Cancer Charity therefore doesn't believe there is enough evidence yet to support a screening programme."

[doc03]

1. May father died from the radiation treatments he received

for prostate cancer. Now I hear many times it is unnecessary to give treatments to a person his age.

[SheilaT]

5. Don't know how old your father was, buti

I've been aware for at least twenty years now that treating prostate cancer in most older men is unnecessary. There are certain exceptions, and I believe there are certain fast-growing versions that absolutely should be treated. But autopsy studies showed a long time ago that most elderly men die with prostate cancer, although not from prostate cancer.

[Tesha]

2. Prostate cancer is tough to classify.

It can be very aggressive or it can do virtually
nothing for decades. (It's actually assumed that
the incidence of prostate cancer reaches just
about 100% if a man lives into his eighties of
so.)

The key is to quantify how aggressive a given
individual man's cancer is. Today, we're not
very good at that but that would provide the
key to knowing whether to pursue "watchful
waiting" (greatly preserving the man's quality
of life) or aggressive therapy (and perhaps
saving the man's life).

The day will come, but it's not here yet.

Tesha

[HuckleB]

3. Interesting.

[phylny]

4. PSA screening saved my husband's life.

He had no symptoms. NOT ONE. No problem urinating, no erectile dysfunction, nothing. He went in for his routine physical, and his PSA was elevated as compared to his previous numbers. He went to a urologist, had a digital exam, and the doctor recommended a biopsy. He had aggressive prostate cancer. The pictures taken during the surgery of his prostate were ugly - filled with black, nasty cancer.

After his surgery, the doctor said he would have been dead within two years had he not had a prostatectomy. He is now cancer free, and has had clear PSA result for the past two years following surgery. That routine screening most definitely saved his life.