PSA screening costs too much and is ineffective

In a commentary in The New York Times, Richard Ablin of the University of Arizona said the screening tool he discovered four decades ago now costs too much and is ineffective.

The American Cancer Society, which does not recommend the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test — a standard screening for men since the 1990s — has urged doctors to speak to their patients about its risks and its limits.

The clinical trials found that the blood test could not be proved to save lives.

PSA does not allow to distinguish between aggressive cancers that require intervention and slow-developing tumors that, depending on the patient’s age, likely will not be a primary cause of death, according to the American Cancer Society.

Furthermore, the test can also provide erroneous results.

According to Ablin, American men have a 16 percent chance of being diagnosed with prostate cancer but only a three percent chance of dying from it because most cancers develop slowly over time.

He deplored PSA screenings’ annual cost of at least three billion dollars, much of that paid for by Medicare, the insurance program for the elderly, and the Veterans Administration.