More Questions about PSA testing and Prostate Surgery

Fear is a powerful motivator to have surgery, once you have a biopsy.  But, with so many unnecessary biopsies done on the basis of PSA testing, perhaps it’s time this whole system is questioned.  According to new research, many men may not benefit at all from testing or surgery, depending on their situation.  If you have read my blog, I think it becomes very clear that prostate biopsies are making a lot of surgeons a lot of money and lead to a lot of unnecessary surgeries, too.  When will we finally get a tool for detection of these cancers that straight out of the 1950s and surgical methods that aren’t nearly as radical with fewer major side effects?

“The real point is that we shouldn’t focus on finding every prostate cancer because, as this study and all the screening studies show, the majority that you find don’t need to be found,’’ said Dr. Thompson, an author of the editorial. “What we should focus our screening on and our testing on are patients who are likely to have more aggressive tumors in which treatment seems to make a difference.”

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/questioning-surgery-for-early-prostate-cancer/