A few weeks ago you will recall
I told you that new studies suggested that younger women can give up breast self-exams. The new wisdom is they don't usually turn up much and when they do, the results are usually nothing to worry about.
Now the new conventional wisdom for aging men is similar. Maybe they should just give up undergoing prostate tests. The rationale is the tests create a lot of anxiety and even if they turn up a problem, the cure may be worse than the problem.
This is actually a government agency making these recommendations. Here is what the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force says:
The Task Force found evidence that screening for prostate cancer provided few health benefits but led to substantial physical harms and some psychological harms in men age 75 and older. In men younger than 75, the Task Force concluded that current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of prostate cancer screening. An estimated 218,890 U.S. men were diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2007, and one in six men will be diagnosed in his lifetime.
Screening for prostate cancer is most often performed using PSA [prostate-specific antigen] tests and digital rectal exams. The PSA test is more likely to detect prostate cancer than the digital rectal exam. However, prostate cancers that are found with a PSA test take years to affect health; most prostate cancers that grow serious enough to cause death take more than 10 years to do so. Since a 75-year-old man has an average life expectancy of about 10 years and is more likely to die from other causes such as heart disease or stroke, prostate cancer screening is unlikely to help men over 75 live longer.
For the same reasons, men younger than 75 with chronic medical problems and a life expectancy of fewer than 10 years are also unlikely to benefit from screening. There are also harms associated with prostate cancer screening, which include biopsies, unnecessary treatment and false-positive results that may lead to anxiety. Complications often result from treating prostate cancer and may include urinary incontinence and impotence. These slow-growing cancers may never have affected a patient's health or well-being had they not been detected by screening.
Read more from The New York Times about whether men will give up the tests that we have become used to. Keep in mind, men under age 75 should keep getting tested!
