SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Prostate Cancer Screening Can Lead to Overtreatment
from ABC News
Many men being treated aggressively for low-grade prostate cancer--particularly if it was detected during prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening--are unlikely to benefit from the intervention, a new study suggests. Men with screen-detected cancer and PSA levels below 4 ng/mL were less likely to have high-grade tumors, disease outside the prostate, or tumors larger than 0.5 cubic centimeters.
Yet, they were nearly 1.5 times more likely to undergo radical prostatectomy than men who had prostate cancer that was not detected by screening, Yu-Hsuan Shao of the Cancer Institute of New Jersey in New Brunswick and colleagues reported in the July 26 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. They were also more likely to have radiation therapy.
Although the relative five-year survival for prostate cancer increased from 69 percent in 1975 to nearly 99 percent in 2003, concerns about overdiagnosis and overtreatment have arisen.
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