A series of studies were recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine that question the efficacy of widespread PSA testing for the early detection of prostate cancer. One study, The European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC Trial), involved 182,000 men in Europe....
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Prostate cancer studies
Anonymous
Saturday, March 28, 2009 at 11:38 AM
Your numbers are both misleading and incomplete. They are misleading in that the European study does not say that mortality for the screened polulation is reduced by 20%, it says that the overal mortality due to prostate cancer is reduced by 20% within ten years. As only 3% of the male polutation is destined to die of prostate cancer, that translates to an overall mortality reduction of approximately 0.6%. They are incomplete in that you neglected to say that the European study also says that screened men are 47 times more likely to be needlessly treated (with the associated potentially severe side-effects) due to PSA screening than to receive that overall 0.6% benefit. Men should be informed of all information regarding the signfificance of these studies in order to make a decision on screening. The case for screening is far less compelling than the "20%" number taken in isolation would seem to suggest.
Your numbers are both misleading and incomplete. They are misleading in that the European study does not say that mortality for the screened polulation is reduced by 20%, it says that the overal mortality due to prostate cancer is reduced by 20% within ten years. As only 3% of the male polutation is destined to die of prostate cancer, that translates to an overall mortality reduction of approximately 0.6%. They are incomplete in that you neglected to say that the European study also says that screened men are 47 times more likely to be needlessly treated (with the associated potentially severe side-effects) due to PSA screening than to receive that overall 0.6% benefit. Men should be informed of all information regarding the signfificance of these studies in order to make a decision on screening. The case for screening is far less compelling than the "20%" number taken in isolation would seem to suggest.