PSA Testing Guidelines May Miss Aggressive Tumors

Just saw this on WebMD and thought I would share it. More opinions/discussions on backing down on PSA testing:

www.webmd.com/prostate-cancer/news/20150922/relaxed-guidelines-on-psa-testing-might-miss-aggressive-tumors-study?src=RSS_PUBLIC

Some takeaways for me:

"On the positive side, there is a lot of prostate cancer that we don't need to know about," said lead researcher Dr. Daniel Barocas, an assistant professor of urologic surgery at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tenn."

"On the negative side, we seem to be missing intermediate and high-risk cancers in men who would be eligible for treatment," he said. "Those are missed opportunities to identify disease and treat it."

..."researchers also found a drop of 28 percent in diagnoses of intermediate-risk cancer and a 23 percent drop in diagnoses of high-risk cancer one year after the guideline was published."

"These findings are consistent with what we hoped would not happen," D'Amico said.

"It is likely that men will develop more advanced prostate cancer before it is diagnosed and be less likely to be cured, he added. "This is a warning that we are not picking up patients who are curable," D'Amico said."

Sounds like those that are at greater risk are those with more aggressive disease. Funny how theses guidelines foloow in the heels of the national healthcare program.