Debating the Value of PSA Prostate Screening - The New York Times

Debating the Value of PSA Prostate Screening - The New York Times: Personal health
Debating the Value of PSA Prostate Screening

In many men identified as having prostate cancer following PSA screening, the disease is neither aggressive nor likely to kill them before something else does.
Credit...Gracia Lam
Jane E. Brody

By Jane E. Brody

Published Feb. 24, 2020
Updated Feb. 25, 2020

We’ve long been schooled on the lifesaving value of early detection of a potentially deadly cancer. So when a simple blood test was introduced in 1994 that could detect the possible presence of prostate cancer, the second leading cause of cancer deaths among American men, it’s not hard to understand why it quickly became hugely popular.

Suddenly, in the decades following approval of the test known as the PSA, for prostate-specific antigen, the number of men receiving a diagnosis of prostate cancer skyrocketed, along with the number undergoing biopsies of this walnut-size gland between the bladder and penis that produces the seminal fluid to nourish sperm.

The goal of screening is to find aggressive cancers early enough to reduce the risk of death, and national health statistics seem to justify the popularity of PSA screening. Today 90 perce

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