Next week the United States Preventive Services Task Force is expected to update its guidelines regarding prostate cancer screening to recommend against healthy men being screened for the cancer with the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test. The reason: The results of a study the Task Force commissioned failed to show any clear benefit from the screening—namely that it does not save lives and does more harm than good by leading to unnecessary and often damaging treatment.
Data from five large randomized clinical trials of PSA testing has apparently convinced the Task Force to reach this conclusion.
The PSA test has come under fire in recent years for causing an overdiagnosis of prostate cancer and resulting in sometimes serious treatments and interventions that may not have been necessary.
In any event, this latest guideline update will do nothing but stoke the flames of the controversy surrounding the value and the relevance of the PSA test.
Readers should be reminded that although the United States Preventive Services Task Force is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, it does not as a rule set health policy in the US. Rather, in their words, it
"… conducts scientific evidence reviews of a broad range of clinical preventive health care services (such as screening, counseling, and preventive medications) and develops recommendations for primary care clinicians and health systems. These recommendations are published in the form of 'Recommendation Statements.'"
Source: MedPage Today
