Prostate Cancer Screening Is Risky And Ineffective: PSA Test May Lose Insurance Coverage

From Bloomberg, "Routine Prostate-Cancer Screening Risky: U.S. Panel" by Molly Peterson and Michelle Fay Cortez:

Prostate-cancer screening doesn’t save enough lives to justify exposing men to risks of death, incontinence and impotence, a U.S. panel will say today in a report that sparked immediate criticism from patient advocates.

The draft recommendations from the Health and Human Services Department’s Preventive Services Task Force may prompt insurers to stop paying for tests measuring PSA, a protein associated with prostate cancer at high levels. The panel will give the public four weeks to comment.***The PSA test “doesn’t distinguish cancer that will never make a difference in a man’s lifetime from cancers that will make a difference,” prompting many men to undergo aggressive treatments they don’t need, Virginia Moyer, the panel’s chairwoman, said yesterday in an interview.

Read the complete article here.