Your risk of prostate cancer has fallen quickly. here's why

[ad_1]

<div _ngcontent-c14 = "" innerhtml = "

Most men diagnosed with prostate cancer do not die of the disease. Between 2011 and 2015Prostate cancer was diagnosed in the United States for 112.6 per 100,000 per year, but only 19.5 per 100,000 died during the same period. It's still way too many dead. But the huge disparity between the number of deaths and the number of diagnoses stems in large part from the overdiagnosis of prostate cancer in older men, the result of screening tests to detect cancers that, if they had never been diagnosed, would not have become life-threatening diseases.

Fortunately, these over-diagnoses are beginning to diminish, as doctors shrink from screening for prostate cancer in older men.

I have already talked about overdiagnosis of cancer in the context of diseases such as thyroid cancer. So, in anticipation of the angry emails that lead me, let me highlight a few important facts.

Metastatic prostate cancer is a terrible disease. My godfather died as a result of metastatic prostate cancer. A few years ago, a rare and aggressive form of the disease was diagnosed. & Nbsp; It has been confirmed that & nbsp; I have already demonstrated a biological predilection for the development of cancer, with kidney cancer that I myself diagnosed a few years ago. As a result, I support everything we can do to reduce the risk of cancer deaths in men – provided we do no more harm than good in the process.

But according to many experts, screening for prostate cancer in the elderly is doing more harm than good. In some men, it creates false alarms based on elevated levels of PSA in the blood, not related to cancer. In other cases, this leads to overdiagnosis, identifying slow – growing cancers that would not have caused morbidity or mortality if they had not been detected. As a result, aggressive screening for prostate cancer causes many men to experience anxiety and unnecessary procedures that result in severe side effects. If we had better ways to identify this small subset of prostate cancer, I would be ecstatic. But until then, experts advise primary care physicians to reduce the frequency and intensity of their prostate cancer screening in their elderly patients.

And it turns out that many primary care physicians have followed this advice. according to a study In Health Affairs, the APS test for men aged 75 and over has dropped significantly since 2008, the year of change in screening guidelines. Here is a picture showing this drop of tests:

At the age of 70, I do not plan to ask my primary care physician to screen me for prostate cancer unless, at that time, we found much better ways to identify and treat high-risk cancers. Sometimes when you're looking for trouble, that's what you'll find.

">

Most men diagnosed with prostate cancer do not die of the disease. Between 2011 and 2015, 112.6 per 100,000 men per year were diagnosed with prostate cancer in the United States, but only 19.5 per 100,000 died during the same period. It's still way too many dead. But the huge disparity between the number of deaths and the number of diagnoses stems in large part from the overdiagnosis of prostate cancer in older men, the result of screening tests to detect cancers that, if they had never been diagnosed, would not have become life-threatening diseases.

Fortunately, these over-diagnoses are beginning to diminish, as doctors shrink from screening for prostate cancer in older men.

I have already talked about overdiagnosis of cancer in the context of diseases such as thyroid cancer. So, in anticipation of the angry emails that lead me, let me highlight a few important facts.

Metastatic prostate cancer is a terrible disease. My godfather died of metastatic prostate cancer and my father was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of the disease a few years ago. It has been confirmed that I have already proven that I have a biological predilection for the development of cancer, one of my kidney cancers having been diagnosed a few years ago. As a result, I support everything we can do to reduce the risk of cancer deaths in men – provided we do no more harm than good in the process.

But according to many experts, screening for prostate cancer in the elderly is doing more harm than good. In some men, it creates false alarms based on elevated levels of PSA in the blood, not related to cancer. In other cases, this leads to overdiagnosis, identifying slow – growing cancers that would not have caused morbidity or mortality if they had not been detected. As a result, aggressive screening for prostate cancer causes many men to experience anxiety and unnecessary procedures that result in severe side effects. If we had better ways to identify this small subset of prostate cancer, I would be ecstatic. But until then, experts advise primary care physicians to reduce the frequency and intensity of their prostate cancer screening in their elderly patients.

And it turns out that many primary care physicians have followed this advice. according to a study In Health Affairs, PSA testing for men 75 years of age and older has significantly decreased since 2008, when screening guidelines were changed. Here is a picture showing this drop of tests:

At the age of 70, I do not plan to ask my primary care physician to screen me for prostate cancer unless, at that time, we found much better ways to identify and treat high-risk cancers. Sometimes when you're looking for trouble, that's what you'll find.