The United States Preventive Services Task Force recently published a recommendation that "healthy men" should not use the PSA test to screen for prostate cancer. The Prostate Net vehemently disagrees with this recommendation. While there has been, and continues to be, unnecessary diagnostic tests made and surgery and radiation therapies employed, we must not discard the PSA test as an important tool in the early diagnosis of prostate cancer.
Here are some facts that need to be part of a man's, and his family's, decision making process: here are seven critical facts from American Cancer Society publications to consider.
Every 15 minutes 24/7 an American man dies from prostate cancer.
This year, 5% more men will die from prostate cancer than died last year.
Men have a higher death rate from prostate cancer than women have from breast cancer.
The 5-year survival rate is 100% when prostate cancer is detected in its early stage.
The 5-year survival rate drops to 30% when prostate cancer has spread throughout the body.
African-American and Latino/Hispanic men have lower survival rates than Caucasian men
When prostate cancer is in its early stage and curable, there are no symptoms or self-tests.
When prostate cancer has spread throughout the body, there is no cure; you can only slow its progress.
Some comments from leading physicians in response to the USPTF's recommendation:
"All of us take extraordinary issue with both the methodology and conclusion of that report," said Dr. Deepak Kapoor, chairman and chief executive of Integrated Medical Professionals, a group that includes the nation's largest urology practice. "We will not allow patients to die, which is what will happen if this recommendation is accepted." He and other urologists said that the P.S.A. test is just one part of an overall strategy that, in the hands of well-trained doctors, can help prevent death and other consequences of cancer.
Dr. Derek Raghavan, president of the Levine Cancer Institute in Charlotte, N.C., said that at the very least, men must stop being so anxious about the results of their P.S.A. tests. But even P.S.A. test results that are considered high by many doctors are not dangerous unless the levels are rising rapidly, Dr. Raghavan said. "We need to educate men to slow down," he said.
But Dr. J. Brantley Thrasher, chairman of urology at the University of Kansas Medical Center, said he feared that the task force's recommendation will eventually lead insurers to stop paying for many prostate cancer treatments and lead many men not to get tested. "There is no question that some people are being overtreated in this country," Dr. Thrasher said. "But we can't go back to the day when men waited so long to be treated that all I could do for them was give them narcotics and wait for them to die."
Even the USPTF has included conciliatory wording in the draft of their recommendation:
While the USPSTF discourages the use of screening tests for which the benefits do not outweigh the harms in the target population, it recognizes the common use of PSA screening in practice today and understands that some men will continue to request and some physicians will continue to offer screening. An individual man may choose to be screened because he places a higher value on the possibility of benefit, however small, than the known harms that accompany screening and treatment of screen-detected cancer, particularly the harms of overdiagnosis and overtreatment. This decision should be an informed decision, preferably made in consultation with a regular care provider. No man should be screened without his understanding and consent; community-based and employer-based screening that does not allow an informed choice should be discontinued.
We agree with this position and encourage men over the age of 40 to get a PSA test, just as they would a blood pressure test, blood glucose level, or cardio-vascular evaluation as part of determining their overall health. To help you understand the controversy about the PSA test, and to help you make YOUR informed decision, we have produced an educational manual that summarizes all of the current points of view on the subject. Send an email requesting a copy to: support@prostatenet.org.
Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) and the Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF), along with the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), SU2C's scientific partner, announced the formation of a new Dream Team dedicated to prostate cancer research during a press conference today at the AACR Annual Meeting 2012, held in Chicago, Ill.
Arul M. Chinnaiyan, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Michigan, and Charles L. Sawyers, M.D., of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, will lead the Dream Team project titled "Precision Therapy for Advanced Prostate Cancer." The Dream Team scientists are drawn from five leading prostate cancer clinical research centers in Ann Arbor, New York, Boston, Seattle, and London.
The SU2C-PCF Prostate Dream Team Translational Cancer Research Grant will provide funding of $10 million over a three-year period for a seven-center project including both clinical centers and two research infrastructure sites that will address therapeutic interventions for advanced prostate cancer with special emphasis on metastatic disease, and deliver near-term patient benefit through investigation by a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, synergistic Dream Team of expert investigators.
Chinnaiyan, Sawyers and the members of their Dream Team will focus on patients with metastatic prostate cancer. First, the team will implement a multi-institutional study that systematically evaluates the prostate cancer genomes of patients enrolling in four clinical trials, evaluating novel drugs for CRPC or beginning treatment with approved drugs like abiraterone.
They will identify predictors of why some patients respond to these therapies, as well as predictors of resistance to these therapies. The study will capture a molecular snapshot of a patient's cancer and incorporate this information into the clinical trials. It will also enable a framework that will facilitate progress toward a personalized approach for evaluating new drugs and treating patients with prostate cancer.
The delivery of clinically valuable information based on the analyses of each patient's tumor will improve the lives of patients with prostate cancer. While state-of-the-art technology in DNA sequencing has dramatically accelerated biomedical research, translation into a clinical setting has numerous barriers that limit the potential benefits. This multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional effort establishes a framework for translating research into precision prostate cancer medicine for patient care.
The project is estimated to start mid-2012 with the first clinical trials scheduled to open in early 2013. A link to a video on the SU2C project can be seen by clicking here or by viewing below.
News Sources
The Doctors Channel - Site listing short information videos on many subjects relating to prostate disease management
News
- Medical Net - a source for daily news releases of information
important to patients and professionals.
Medscape - an on-line resource for patients and professionals; for
a specific recap of major clinical literature check this link.
MedLine
Plus - searchable database of the most important consumer and
professional publications on the disease provided by the National
Institutes of Health.
CURE -
magazine and site geared to provide the latest developments in cancer
research.
Cancer News
on the Net - an Internet publication written for all cancer
patients and their families.
Follow us on:
The Prostate Net In the News
One On One interview with Steve Adubato and guest Virgil Simons
Featuring a renowned faculty of clinicians and researchers presenting
leading edge information on the best standards of care in managing the full
spectrum of prostate cancer and related conditions.
