Many Costs of Lowering PSA Cutoff: Study
...."Until there is evidence that screening is effective, increasing the number of men recommended for prostate biopsy -- and the number potentially diagnosed and treated unnecessarily -- would be a mistake," he said.....
Further to: "PSA Screening Test for Prostate Cancer - Another Scam?" like the cholesterol scam here is another patient creation idea that is itching among the pharma/medical Mafiosi....
Unfortunately, the trusting and the uniformed will fall for these tests at great peril. The biopsies that result from this scheme are far more costly to health than the article implies because the patient is never informed of the following...
...."Even if he tells you before the biopsy that you would have to start treatment immediately, he won't tell you "WHY." The reason, he will admit if you ask, is that the biopsy, itself, can start the spread of the cancer from the inside of the casing it was in. Remember, the body is protecting itself from having the cancer spread -- it builds a wall around the cancer. Once you penetrate that wall, even with a very tiny needle, the cancer cells (they are certainly smaller than the needle) can leak out through the hole and enter the body. These cancer cells can enter the blood stream and within a few seconds they have been distributed throughout the entire body.
Perhaps your immune system is strong enough to handle these stray cancer cells. Perhaps they just won't find a good place to "live." But, perhaps you have just allowed the doctor to cause the metastasizing of your cancer.Obviously if the leak continues for only a day or so it is much less dangerous than if the leak of those cancer cells continues for weeks or months. So, the doctor does the biopsy, discovers cancer, and then tells you that you must start treatment immediately. I think it is medical malpractice for a doctor to fail to warn a patient that a biopsy can cause an immediate spreading of the cancer, and that such "spreading" then would appear to greatly limit your choices of treatment."....
Extracted form a must read: "Do Biopsy Potentiate Cancer?" post.
Like my earlier note on The Depths of Deceit Mammography this could yet turn out to be another scheme to milk the unsuspecting...
Chris Gupta
-----------------------Few Benefits, Many Costs of Lowering PSA Cutoff: Study
By Megan Rauscher
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Aug 03 - Lowering the threshold for an "abnormal" PSA level from greater than 4 ng/mL to 2.5 ng/mL would dramatically increase the number of unnecessary biopsies with no evidence that it would reduce prostate cancer mortality, researchers warn in report in the August 3rd issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
"Millions of men currently have abnormal PSAs (PSA > 4) -- many times the number that will develop clinically important prostate cancer," Dr. H. Gilbert Welch of the VA Medical Center in White River Junction, Vermont noted in comments to Reuters Health. "Some doctors are advocating for a lower threshold to define abnormal (PSA > 2.5). If adopted, this would double the number of men defined as abnormal."
Using NHANES data, Dr. Welch and colleagues calculated that roughly 1.5 million American men between the ages of 40 to 69 -- the most likely to undergo PSA screening -- have a PSA level higher than 4.0 ng/mL, justifying a biopsy. Lowering the threshold to 2.5 ng/mL would add an additional 1.8 million men to the list of those needing a biopsy, if all men were screened.
This group of men with "abnormal" PSAs would comprise 10.7% of all US men between the ages of 50 and 59 and 17% of those between the ages of 60 and 69. For context, only 0.3% of men in their 50s and only 0.9% of men in their 60s are expected to die from prostate cancer in the next 10 years.
"Until there is evidence that screening is effective, increasing the number of men recommended for prostate biopsy -- and the number potentially diagnosed and treated unnecessarily -- would be a mistake," he said.
If anything, consideration should be given to raising the PSA cutoff, Dr. Welch and his colleagues contend. "Because screening always has benefits and harms, it is possible that raising the PSA threshold would enhance the net effect of PSA screening by identifying the people at highest risk of clinically significant disease and thereby limiting the number of healthy people harmed," they write.
J Natl Cancer Inst 2005;97:1132-1137.
posted by Chris Gupta on Thursday August 11 2005
updated on Thursday October 4 2012URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2005/08/11/many_costs_of_lowering_psa_cutoff_study.htm
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