National guidelines on prostate cancer screening with the PSA test are set by the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). This independent panel of experts in preventive and primary care recommends against screening for prostate cancer in men older than 70.
Why? Prostate cancer tends to be slow-growing. Men in this age group are more likely to die with the disease rather than from it. And in the view of the USPSTF, survival benefits from treating PSA-detected prostate cancer in older men are unlikely to outweigh the harms of treatment.
Still, that leaves open the possibility that men could be screened for prostate cancer only after their disease has advanced to symptomatic stages. For a perspective on PSA screening and advanced prostate cancer treatment in older men, we spoke with Dr. Marc B. Garnick, the Gorman Brothers Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and editor in chief of the Harvard Medical School Guide to Prostate Diseases.
