American Cancer Society stresses importance of educating patients to risk of prostate screening

The Los Angeles Times: New prostate cancer screening guidelines issued Wednesday by the American Cancer Society "emphasize that physicians should better educate men about both the risks and benefits of using the PSA test for screening. They also call for cutbacks in the use of digital rectal exams to find tumors and recommend the end of mass prostate-screening programs at health fairs and other sites." The revised directives "come on the heels of several studies suggesting that large numbers of tumors identified by PSA screening are inconsequential and that biopsies and treatment produce more harm than those tumors would. Because of such findings, the new guidelines emphasize the importance of physicians explaining both risks and benefits to the patients more fully so that each man can make an informed decision about whether to get tested" (Maugh, 3/4).

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This article was reprinted from khn.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.