IF GETTING A screening test for prostate cancer isn’t on your radar, it’s probably because the government guidelines essentially told you not to bother back in 2012. But prostate cancer rates have continued to rise. It’s now the second leading cause of cancer deaths in men, and it’s particularly lethal for Black men, who are more than twice as likely to die from it as white men.
The guidelines have evolved. The reason to consider the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test now isn’t any big, headline-grabbing news that there’s a whole new way to test for it (there isn’t yet). It’s not even that PSA testing is now associated with about a 13 percent reduction in deaths from cancer and a 35 percent reduction in metastatic cancer diagnoses.
It’s that the entire landscape of what happens after a troublesome result has shifted. A high PSA number used to fast-track you to an uncomfortable or potentially infection-causing biopsy and hustle you to radiation or surgery. Because many prostate cancers grow slowly—which is why doctors say men are more likely to die with prostate cancer than from it—lots of guys underwent procedures that they wouldn’t have really needed.
But now, MRIs and high-tech monitoring can help ID which prostate cancers need to be acted on and which can be left safely alone. It’s how we can use it as part of a smart screening pathway.” THE PSA TEST, which measures a protein produced by the prostate, has never been straightforward. High levels indicate something’s off in that walnut-size gland, but they don’t tell you if it’s cancer; it might just be an enlarged prostate or a urinary tract infection.
When the FDA approved the test for cancer screening more than 30 years ago, the message was clear: Get the test! Preventive Services Task Force didn’t recommend it on grounds that there wasn’t enough evidence that the benefits outweighed the harms. Now, the tide is turning back to “get it.” Start at age 40 to 45 if you’re Black, have a family history of prostate cancer (father, brothers, uncles), or if breast or ovarian cancer runs in your family.
Start around age 50 if you don’t have a family history or other risk factors. (When to get it again? If your PSA is in a healthy range, then screen every two to four years after that.) And there’s one test you don’t have to take. If fear of the digital rectal exam (DRE) is keeping you from getting tested, relax.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
