By Andrea King Collier | Posted August 31 2010
Larry Johnson got screened for prostate cancer, during a routine physical eight years ago, and he’s convinced that it saved his life. Like Johnson, thousands of men over the age of 50 are given the Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) blood test by their health care providers to detect the disease in its earliest stages. Over 200,000 men will be diagnosed, and 32,000 men will die from the disease in 2010 (a mortality reduction from previous years). But is PSA screening the key to saving men’s lives or doing unnecessary harm?
The debate on the benefits of prostate screening rages on. The American Cancer Society (ACS) no longer recommends routine annual PSA screenings for early detection and treatment. Durado Brooks, MD, MPH, ACS director for Prostate and Colorectal Cancers says, “We aren’t certain that annual prostate screenings will actually save lives.”
Many men’s health advocacy groups, such as Zero the Project to End Prostate Cancer, argue that early detection is the best chance at saving more lives. According to a Swedish study that followed 20,000 men between the ages of 50 and 65, over 14 years, published in the July 2010 Lancet, the PSA test cut deaths due to prostate cancer by 44 percent. However, another study published in the July 2010 Archives of Internal Medicine suggests that screening leads to overtreatment and shows little evidence of improving lifespan.
ACS now recommends that men age 50 and over should talk to their doctors about the risks and limitations of the PSA screening. It also advises men in high-risk groups, including men with brothers, fathers or sons who have had a prostate cancer diagnosis at a young age consult with their provider, starting at age 45.
So what’s a man supposed to do with these mixed messages? Ultimately, it is a personal decision. Larry Johnson says that living with cancer growing inside him was just not an option. “Hearing that I had cancer, after my biopsy came in was not easy,” Johnson says. “ And the surgery and treatments were hard. But I am still here, living cancer-free” He says when men ask him, “I tell them to take control and get the test.”
CONNECT THE DOTS
For more information on making a decision to be screened, visit The Centers for Disease Control Informed Decision Making. The Prostate Cancer Foundation and UsTOO International are men’s health advocacy groups that also offer guidelines. The James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute and John Hopkins Medicine has analysis of recent studies in a report.
Guest blogger, Andrea King Collier is a freelance health and health policy writer and the author of Still With Me… A Daughter’s Journey of Love and Loss (Simon and Schuster, 2003) the Black Woman’s Guide to Black Men’s Health (Warner, 2007).
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