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Biden will be here soon: Former President metastatic prostate cancer
Prostate Cancer | Last Active: 1 day ago | Replies (113)Comment receiving replies
There’s a well-known answer to your first question—> “ Why else would routine preventative testing be frowned upon?”
In the early 2000s, many men were getting routine PSA tests. Unfortunately, so many men lost their minds and panicked when they heard that “you have prostate cancer” (that was low-grade and localized disease) and jumped quickly to getting a prostatectomy when it wasn’t medically necessary. What the medical community found was that often the cure (with its known side/after effects) can be worse than the disease itself.
As a result, the USPSTF (made a decision to keep men from harming themselves and actually) recommended against any routine prostate cancer screening (assigning the screening a “D” recommendation: https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recommendation/prostate-cancer-screening-2012).
As a result of much political fallout from that “D” recommendation, a few years later (in 2018) they revised that 2012 recommendation to what currently is in place —> the current USPSTF guidelines recommend against PSA screening after age 70 (https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recommendation/prostate-cancer-screening).
That’s the answer to your first question and how we got here from there.
Replies to "There’s a well-known answer to your first question—> “ Why else would routine preventative testing be..."
Oh man, do I know it! I remember the controversy very well and it’s one of the reasons why my cancer progressed to the Gleason Stage it did...
But the rebound effect was more men being diagnosed with advanced stage cancer. So then they had to backtrack and say OK, we’ll test but not over a certain age because you’re gonna be dead anyway…WTF??
It’s two extreme positions with ‘rational’ in the middle somewhere. No one forces men to self harm; doctors should be the arbiters of the test results. Today we have AS, which is a fantastic collaboration between doctor and patient… At last!
We all know that the current guidelines are certain to be changed - probably to age 75 or so. The many men on this board who’ve elected treatment past age 70 is just a small sampling of how much men disagree with this panel’s view of our useless, last few years of life on this earth past age 70…what f****ing nerve…Best,
Phil
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Here is an excellent piece from the Washington Post written by a genitourinary oncologist which sets the record straight and is very encouraging for Stage 4 prostate cancer patients and their loved ones. https://wapo.st/3HdTaFn