Study shows significant decline in prostate cancer diagnoses

the Oncology Nurse Advisor take:

According to a new study published online in The Journal of Urology, researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, have found that new prostate cancer diagnoses in the United States dropped 28% in year following the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) draft recommendation against routine prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening for me.

For the study, researchers sought to assess the impact of the USPSTF's grade D recommendation in the year after the recommendation, which was announced in October 2011. Researchers used the National Cancer Database to identify new cancers diagnosed between January 2010 and December 2012.

Results showed that 12 months after the guidelines were published, new low-risk cancer diagnoses had decreased by 37.9%, new diagnoses of intermediate-risk disease dropped by 28.1%, and new diagnoses of high-risk prostate cancer decrease by 23.1%.

"The results raise concern that if this trend continues more men may be diagnosed at a point when their disease is advanced. Younger, healthier men with intermediate or high-risk disease would normally be candidates for aggressive local therapy and they may not be receiving a timely diagnosis under this policy," said first author Daniel Barocas, M.D., MPH, assistant professor of urological surgery and medicine.