Medical group set to recommend that men not get screened for prostrate cancer

Washington, DC (TDN) — A medical group is set to recommend that healthy men not get screened for prostate cancer. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is expected to make the announcement as early as Tuesday. It will then allow for a comment period before issuing a final recommendation.

This is the same group that told women in their 40s that they don't need mammograms. It is expected to recommend a "D" rating for prostate specific antigen, or PSA, testing. Such a rating means "there is moderate or high certainty that the service has no net benefit or that the harms outweigh the benefits," according to the group's website.

The task proposed recommendation is said to be based on the finding that research shows screening with the PSA blood test results in "small or no reduction" in prostate cancer deaths. In addition, PSA tesitng is said to be associated with harms related to subsequent evaluation and treatments.

The PSA test, which is sometimes accompanied by a digital rectal exam, can help determine if a man has prostate cancer. The problem is that many of the cancers that get detected are so small and slow-growing, they'll never be harmful, and doctors have a difficult time discerning the quick, harmful cancers from the slow, harmless ones.

To compound the problem, men who receive treatment for slow-growing cancers could become impotent or could even die from those treatments.

News of the proposed announcement is already meeting with a lot of dissent as prostate cancer survivors push back against the recommendation.