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Healthy men will no longer undergo screening for prostate cancer

Alexey Portnov, medical expert
Last reviewed: 16.10.2021

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10 October 2011, 18:07

Healthy men will stop taking prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests regularly to detect prostate cancer, a working group responsible for medical preventive examinations at the US government came to such conclusion.

This decision was made on the basis of an analysis of the results of five large-scale clinical trials that showed that the use of the prostate-specific antigen assay as screening does not reduce the mortality from prostate cancer and leads to unnecessary diagnostic and therapeutic manipulations that involve a high risk of complications.

Statistics show that in the US, prostate cancer is detected in every sixth man. Prostate cancer is typical for the elderly, and the mortality from this disease is very high in people older than 75 years. It should be noted that prostate cancer is a tumor that develops extremely slowly, and, often, does not manage to lead to complications until the person dies of old age or another disease.

The results of the studies showed that the diagnosis and treatment that were initiated after the PSA test often lead to the development of a number of complications: chronic pain, erectile dysfunction, incontinence.

The Working Group noted that between 1986 and 2005, about 1 million Americans underwent surgery and radiation therapy for prostate cancer detected by PSA analysis. Of these, 5,000 died shortly after the operation, and about 70,000 men faced a number of serious complications. About 300 thousand people began to suffer from impotence and urinary incontinence.

All these data led the working group to decide to stop using the PSA test to screen prostate cancer in healthy men. Most medical organizations supported this decision, but the adversaries were pharmaceutical companies and doctors who specialize in treating prostate cancer.

Also, recently scientists have shown that regular outdoor walks improve the prognosis of prostate cancer

trusted-source [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]

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