Recent advances have made PSA screening for prostate cancer more effective – so much so that current federal guidelines that now recommend against routine screening for men should be updated, a top doctor argues.
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There are a number of attainable remedies for prostate cancer, together with surgical procedure and radiation.
Many men whose tumors are confined to the prostate do not die of the cancer, according to the USA Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some men – especially those who are older – may opt for active surveillance. “Using strict inclusion criteria for very low-risk or low-risk prostates cancer can select a group of prostate cancer patients for active surveillance who would avoid the side effects of therapy while experiencing comparable survival and quality of life”.
“One of the arguments against screening is that we are over-detecting and overtreating prostate cancer, and because we are overtreating men who don’t need treatment, we are doing more harm than good”.
The research paper clearly outlines a number of aspects of expectant management for men with low-risk prostate cancer.
This is “excellent news” about the popularity of “active surveillance”, said study author Dr. Matthew Cooperberg, the Helen Diller Family Chair in Urology at the University of California, San Francisco.
A new study from The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) shows men with early-stage prostate cancer are opting out of treatment and are instead, opting for regular monitoring. Watchful waiting or active surveillance, which is termed expectant management, is an appropriate approach for many men with localized tumors; it avoids the devastating side-effects of aggressive treatments (surgery and/or radiation) that are unnecessarily for many cases. They also likely won’t have symptoms.
The ideal rate of active surveillance for low-grade disease isn’t clear, Cooperberg told Reuters Health, but “it’s probably higher than 40 percent”.
The researchers also found that use of a therapy called androgen deprivation for intermediate- and high-risk cancers fell by the end of the study.
Doctors have seen a spike in the amount of men who are choosing active surveillance or watchful waiting among those with localized prostate cancer.
Aside from skin cancer, prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in men.
While a handful of studies show a significant decline in screening since the recommendation was released in 2012, two abstracts presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago arrived at essentially opposite conclusions.
Currently, the government-backed USA Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends against screening for PSA levels.
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The analysis included 10,472 men; average age, 66 years.
