The council recommendation on cancer screening for the European Union accepted in 2003 states that PSA testing for prostate cancer, though promising, does not meet the criteria of having proved to decrease the cancer-specific mortality, or well known and acceptable benefits and risks, as well as cost-effectiveness. Therefore, prostate cancer screening is not recommended. The statement emphasizes the importance of the randomized trials and specifically cites the ERSPC in this respect.
This position is consistent with the recommendations of an expert panel organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Cancer Union, which stated that sufficient evidence showing the benefits of prostate cancer screening in terms of mortality reduction is still to emerge. Therefore, offering screening as part of health care policy can not be recommended without further evidence.
Similar conclusions about withholding screening due to lack of evidence have also been reached in assessments of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Group and the U.S. National Cancer Institute.
Nevertheless, screening does take place even if it is not part of the policy. This is done on the basis of judgment and the responsibility of individual physicians and their patients, who may in some circumstances, regard the possibility of benefit as more important than lack of demonstrated effectiveness.
The PSA test, which can give an early indication of prostate cancer, is available to you
if you want to be tested. However, experts disagree on how useful the PSA test is. This is why there is a lot of research and why there is no national screening programme for prostate cancer in the United Kingdom (UK).
You need to:
> screen 1410 men
> then take a biopt from 340 of them
> then diagnose 82 men with prostate cancer
> to save 1 man from dying from prostate cancer
