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Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Prostate Cancer: Many Could Be Fine Foregoing Treatment

One in six American men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year. It’s the number three cancer killer of U.S. men. Two new studies released earlier this month showed that not only are current prostate cancer screening methods leading to many men being treated unnecessarily, but many suffering serious side-effects like incontinence and impotence.


Both studies concluded that certain men exhibiting cancers deemed “low-risk” allowed to forego treatment while remaining under active watch of a doctor, lived with little to no side-effects from the cancer. The studies also concluded that men with “low-risk” prostate cancer who were treated with the normal course for prostate cancer treatment had a lower quality of life than those who were not treated. Side-effects are often severe with the treatment of prostate cancer, including incontinence and impotence.


The American Cancer Society (ACS) on their website recommends that only men who fall in the high risk category should be tested unless the individual requests that he be tested for prostate cancer. This comes as a relief to many men, as some of the detection procedures can be invasive. These results also beg the question of how doctors will improve non-surgical screening methods for prostate cancer to determine if the cancer a cancer is a low-risk or high-risk. So far conventional methods used include blood tests that detect prostate-specific Antigen (PSA) levels and Digital Rectal Examination (DRE). Nothing new was brought to the table from these studies with regard to improvement in screening methods.


The most important information we can come away with about prostate cancer screenings, according to ACS Chief Medical Officer Otis W. Bawley, MD, “The question is not as simple as: ‘does prostate cancer screening work?’ What we need to know is: what are benefits of prostate cancer screening and are they large enough to outweigh the harms associated with it? And despite the release of this early data, we still cannot say whether the benefits outweigh the risk.”


You should talk to your doctor about any prostate-related questions you have about prostate health, but consider that the answers are not as straight forward as many physicians once thought. It’s important to create an open dialogue and only treat illnesses that are necessary to treat, or the side-effects may be worse than living with the disease.



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