Screening for prostate cancer can come with a real risk

The American Cancer Society, which has long been a staunch defender of most cancer screening, is now saying that the benefits of detecting many cancers, especially breast and prostate, have been overstated. Much more, screening for prostate cancer and certain other cancers can come with a real risk of overtreating many small cancers while missing cancers that are deadly.

The cancer society’s decision to consider that advantages to screening have been exaggerated, was spurred in part by an analysis published yesterday in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

In it, researchers report a 40 percent increase in prostate cancer diagnoses and a near doubling of early-stage cancers, but just a 10 percent decline in cancers that have spread beyond the prostate to the lymph nodes or elsewhere in the body.

Still, the researchers and others say, they do not think all screening will — or should — go away. Instead, they say that when people make a decision about being screened, they should understand what is known about the risks and benefits.