A journal article published on August 16, 2012 examined prostate cancer screening and its effect on men’s quality of life. Click here to read the article.
Researchers hypothesised the effects of prostate cancer screening on men of all ages who were followed for their entire life span and believed that screening for prostate cancer would result in more life years gained.
If comparing the benefits of screening to no screening, for every 1000 men screened the number of prostate cancer deaths would decreased from 31 to 22, the number of men requiring palliative therapy would decreased from 40 to 26 and there would be a reduction in the prostate cancer mortality over a lifetime of 37%. Concluding, annual screening in this group of 1000 men would result in a total of 73 years of life gained.
In general, men who were screened and had prostate cancer diagnosed early were less likely to have both preoperative and postoperative symptoms than those whose cancer was felt upon digital rectal examination.
Whilst screening for prostate cancer reduces mortality, there are implications of prostate cancer treatment that may impact a man’s quality of life. In order to save 1 life from prostate cancer, 98 men would need to be screened and 5 cancers to be detected.
