New recommendations on PSA tests

[Rogar]

For those guys out there like me who have been getting routine PSA tests to screen for prostate cancer, it sounds like this is no longer recommended. It also sounds like some of the other more unpleasant screening are no longer recommended. At least that's my take. For healthy men without symptoms, anyway.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/health/07prostate.html?_r=2

[ApatheticNoMore]

Healthy men should no longer receive a P.S.A. blood test to screen for prostate cancer because the test does not save lives over all and often leads to more tests and treatments that needlessly cause pain, impotence and incontinence in many, a key government health panel has decided.

Thanks for the information, useful stuff, should be read. No I don't have a prostrate myself :). But operations due to false PSA scores nearly killed my father a year ago. Now, I know he's old and frail and all that, I'm hardly saying he has many years left, I know he doesn't. I'm merely saying that the operation for false PSA tests alone nearly KILLED him! Certainly not in line with the hypocratic oath there!

I've also heard that urinary tract infections can interfere with PSA tests as well, but these are pretty common among old men. The doctors didn't even try to rule out other things that could have lead to a high PSA, like a UTI (a culture would have been easy enough to do), instead they sent him right in for explorative surgery.

[Marianne]

DH and I were discussing this earlier. My feeling is that it's another one of those 'the cures are worse then the disease' things. JMO. DH has never had one and after reading the new/latest info, he's going to pass on it.