Doctors screening the wrong men for prostate cancer
Medicine has got it all wrong when it comes to testing for prostate cancer, a new study has discovered. Elderly men – who get no benefit from the tests – are being screened every year, while those in their 50s are often not being tested at all.
Around half of all men aged 70 and older are having a PSA (prostate-specific antigen) test every year, which is around double the rate of those in their fifties who are having regular tests. Even men aged 85 and older were being screened as often as men in their fifties, say researchers from the University of Chicago.
But it’s all a pointless exercise. Men who develop prostate cancer in their 70s will die with the disease, and not from it. Worse, a positive test could trigger aggressive treatment that is unnecessary and damaging, say the researchers.
(Source: Journal of Clinical Oncology, 2011; doi: 10.1200/JCO.2010.31.9004).