U.S. Preventative Services Task Force cancels meeting to review prostate-cancer screening

The Wall Street Journal Health Blog: "The United States Preventive Services Task Force has canceled a meeting set for early next month at which the thorny issue of prostate-cancer screening was due for a vote. ... [W]hen prostate-cancer screening came up last fall, the USPSTF initially voted to recommend against screening for men of all ages before opting instead to re-vote on the issue. … Currently the USPSTF has an 'I' rating for prostate-cancer screening, which means the current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms, for men younger than 75. For older men, the rating is 'D,' which means the USPSTF recommends against screening. The group last issued recommendations in August 2008, but in 2009, results from two large screening trials were published. The studies provided no clear answer of whether the benefits of screening outweighed the harms" (Hobson, 10/26).

---

This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.