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Prostate Cancer And The American Cancer Society

Decent Essays

Each year approximately 233,000 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer (Eggener, Cifu, & Nabhan, 2015). In 2015, prostate cancer was the second most common cancer related cause of death among United States men (Eggener, et. al., 2015). While the majority of prostate cancers are slow growing with a 5-year survival rate of approximately 98%, statistics show that when prostate cancer is identified as metastatic, the 5-year survival rate dramatically drops down to 20-25% (Eggener, et. al., 2015). According to these numbers alone, it appears screening for prostate cancer would be a well-accepted practice. However, current methods of screening for this cancer are controversial and has lead organizations like the U.S Preventative Service Task Force (USPSTF) and the American Cancer Society (ACS) to different guidelines for screening.
Organizations are not the only ones at odds with current screening methods. Depending on which organization a physician prefers to follow, a patient may be told to have PSA screening by one physician and be advised to avoid PSA screening by another physician. There are several different factors why this screening is controversial. The most important is the sensitivity and specificity of PSA screening. Research has shown that PSA screening presents with an unusually high amount of false positive results (U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, 2012). This raises some concerns whether the benefit of screening outweighs the possibility of over

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