News & Views

摘要

A substantial number of elderly men are getting screened for prostate cancer unnecessarily, researchers from the San Francisco VA Medical Center report in JAMA (2006; 296:2336-2342).rnIn their cohort study of nearly 600,000 men aged 70 and older at dozens of VA hospitals in the United States, they found high rates of Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) testing, even among elderly men with multiple comorbidities whose life expectancy was substantially less than 10 years. Men with a history of prostate cancer, elevated PSA, or symptoms of the disease were excluded from the analysis.