Prostate cancer could be treated by destroying tumors with electric currents

> It's a screening blood test which, when positive, makes you go get a more serious exam. So the effect of a false positive is that you get, say, an MRI. So at worst, 3x the required number of MRIs will be taken due to such screening. It's not even excessive irradiation of people.

Actually it’s not, prostate MRI is still new and a positive PSA with negative MRI will still get a biopsy, some “centers of excellence” may practice differently but I trained in the highest volume prostate MRI center in North America and this is certainly not the case at the moment. There is insufficient evidence to support your claim that we can stop at MRI at this time.

> For people with a strong family history of prostate cancer it's a different story. The point is the different people need to consider different checkups based on their personal medical situation and family history.

This is included in our guidelines which are intended for average risk patients. There is insufficient evidence to come down hard for high risk patients (1st degree relative > Prostate cancer rarely requires hospitalization

This is the hospitalization rate for BIOPSY. Even metastatic prostate cancer rarely requires hospitalization.

> The point is to catch the prostate cancer early enough, that treatment can get rid of it with very little damage to surrounding tissue.

I’m not sure how you think this is true. Robotic prostatectomies and curative intent radiation are the standard of care for organ defined disease (representing 90-95% of cases detected WITHOUT screening, obviously higher with) and both carry significant risks of impotence and incotinence.

First line treatment of disseminated disease is androgen deprivation which actually isn’t as morbid as you claim.

> Also - medical health providers can easily bring up arguments such as those you have brought up, to avoid screening even conditionally for various health risks. So I believe you have an overly lenient evaluation of screening policies.

Every doctor practices evidence based medicine. The USPTF, AUA and EUA/ESUR all recommend against routine screening. There is a proposal right now in Europe to re-evaluate this recommendation given the emergence of prostate MRI and potential to avoid biopsy but again we’re getting into experimental/emerging areas hence why this is a /discussion/ with your provider and participating in /shared decision making/ rather than telling everyone “go get your PSA screen”.

I’m not sure why you’re calling every major societal guideline a questionable choice of evidence? We practice evidence based medicine not science based medicine.

PSA screening WAS a thing until studies came out showing harm and the USPTF changed their recommendation.

Some urologist like following PSA in average-risk patients because it’s a quick and easy billing visit. I assure you the physician societies all consider patient morbidity when making these recommendations, overall mortality is still the most important metric in medical research because it is the least subjective to bias. As discussed above the treatment options for disseminated disease have low morbidity and the treatment options for confined disease have similar-higher morbidity.

What is saddening about the AUA perspective or the dilemma the medical society is failing to understand? Can you provide any evidence to suggest prostate cancer screening reduces morbidity?

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