THOUSANDS HAVE POINTLESS TREATMENT

ENDTHENEEDLESS PROSTATEDEATHS

THOUSANDS of men are being needlessly treated for prostate cancer because there is no reliable test for it, experts say today.

A decade-long study involving 410,000 British men found fundamental flaws in the blood test that forms the cornerstone of the way the disease is diagnosed.

Using the PSA (prostate specific antigen) blood test to screen healthy men would not save any extra lives, the Oxford and Bristol-led researchers said.

Study leader Professor Richard Martin, of Bristol University, said: ‘PSA is the only tool we have, but it is a very blunt tool. It detects prostate cancer in men who will not benefit from treatment, but it misses aggressive cancer in men who do need treatment.’

The researchers invited 190,000 healthy men aged 50 to 69 to have the PSA test. If

that came back with a high level they were offered a biopsy. If that biopsy came back with signs of cancer they were then offered a choice of treatment – surgery or radiotherapy, followed by hormone drugs.

They were compared to another 220,000 men of the same age who could have a PSA test if they asked for it but were not actively offered one.

The researchers, whose findings are published in the JAMA medical journal,

found about a fifth more men were diagnosed with prostate cancer in the screening group.

But this resulted only in needless treatment without actually saving lives.

The number of deaths after ten years were no different among men who were screened and those who were not – about three deaths for every 1,000 men in each group.

The researchers say neither the PSA test nor the biopsy is very good at differentiating between slow and quick-growing tumours, which is why the death numbers were identical.

And the system also missed some aggressive cancers. Of the 188 who died after having been screened, 68 cases were missed by the PSA test and four were missed by the biopsy.