New Recommendations for P.S.A. Blood Tests for Prostate Cancer

The biggest health news story of the day is the new recomendations being released by the United States Preventive Services Task Force for P.S.A. testing. The new recommendation: healthy men should no longer receive the P.S.A. test. The recommendation does not apply to unhealthy men.

Wading through this information it does seem that the panel has some ground to stand on. They are basing their conclusions on five controlled clinical trials. This recommendation raises an interesting ethical and moral dilemma about whether men (and their families, and wives) are really better off not knowing that they may develop prostate cancer if the prostate cancer is not going to impact them until let's say age 85.

The New York Times has a great article discussing the recommendations online as well as some excerpts from patient's narratives about their experiences with prostate cancer. Listening to the first two patient's you get a very different picture of the impact of early testing and early intervention for prostate cancer.