PSA: To test or not to test, from Harvard Men’s Health Watch
Our society has been encouraged to value early cancer diagnosis. But not all cancers are alike. Detecting prostate cancer early is not nearly as important as detecting lung cancer or colon cancer early, because many prostate cancers grow very slowly and don’t threaten health. Spotting prostate cancer early usually leads to treatment, but current treatments can cause life-changing side effects such as incontinence and erectile dysfunction. The crux of the controversy is whether screening for prostate cancer using the PSA test does more harm than good. That's the question the new studies—one done in the United States, the other in Europe—were designed to answer.
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