Prostate Cancer: More Men At Risk Due To Less Screening

Investigators reporting for The Journal of Urology believe that a controversial recommendation by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) could significantly raise the risk of prostate cancer in men going undiagnosed, or being found too late. “To that extent, the guideline had a beneficial effect”, Barocas said.

“Without awareness it is hard to encourage men to have the sometimes hard conversations with their doctors that may lead to prostate cancer screenings”, stated Dr. Bradley Carthon, assistant professor of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University.

Since 2011, when the guideline was published, new techniques, including MRI and ultrasound, have been developed that can diagnose prostate cancer more accurately and distinguish between low- and high-risk cancers.

“On the negative side, we seem to be missing intermediate and high-risk cancers in men who would be eligible for treatment”, he said.

Since the 1980s a 40 percent decline in prostate-cancer deaths has been noted, mainly due to PSA screening.

Usually a slow growing cancer, early stage prostate cancers are confined within the prostate gland and have a high cure rate.

Some men are at high risk for prostate cancer and should be screened, he said.

Dr. Joseph recommends men get a prostate exam beginning at age 50, but if there’s a family history of it, he recommends getting tested at age 40. This will push patients and will help specialists towards making more informed screening, monitoring and treatment decisions. His father died from prostate cancer, so he knew he’d be at risk.

However, in the same time span, the study identified a drop of 28.1 percent in diagnoses of intermediate-risk disease, and 23.1 percent in high-risk prostate cancer, which could result in these men to miss invaluable chances to spare themselves from aggressive cancer, and death.

Using the U.S. National Cancer Database, Barocas and colleagues looked at the effect of the new guidelines on the number of new prostate cancer diagnoses between January 2010 and December 2012.

The investigators noticed a drop in prostate cancer cases by 12 percent in the following month after the USPSTF guidelines came into effect.

Finally, prostate cancer survivor Chatman Carruthers notes, “Being aware of my own personal risk and my risk factors allowed me to be diagnosed early and beat prostate cancer”.

The American Cancer Society says one in seven men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer.