Thursday, August 18, 2016

More PSA

There are some fascinating aspects to the PSA discussion. Many believe that testing for PSA finds disease that has no implication to health. That is, the small is not indicative of the large. A biopsy of the prostate showing cancer does not mean that the individual with that biopsy is at risk from cancer--but not always.
The graph below from the New England Journal of Medicine shows that the time after the introduction of PSA testing resulted in dramatic drop in prostate cancer deaths. (The other side of the argument is that many were treated who did not need it.)
Another thing from the graph: Look at the virtual non-impact of breast cancer survival with the introduction of mammography.

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