MPH Program’s Dr. Barocas: Reduced prostate screening could miss advanced tumors
Relaxed guidelines on prostate cancer screening may delay diagnosis and treatment of aggressive tumors, a new study suggests.
In 2011, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended against routine prostate specific antigen (PSA) testing, to curb over-diagnosis and overtreatment of prostate cancer. Since then, PSA screening has dropped by 28 percent, the researchers report.
MPH Program alum and lead researcher, Dr. Barocas stays on the positive side of this study by taking in the fact that "there is a lot of prostate cancer that we don't need to know about." These are low-risk cancers that most men will not die of, and the treatment can be more harmful than the cancer, he explained. "To that extent, the guideline had a beneficial effect," Barocas said.
"On the negative side, we seem to be missing intermediate and high-risk cancers in men who would be eligible for treatment," he said. "Those are missed opportunities to identify disease and treat it."