PSA Tests Do More Harm Than Good

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WASHINGTON (AP) — No major medical group recommends routine PSA blood tests to check men for prostate cancer, and now a government panel is saying they do more harm than good and healthy men should no longer receive the tests as part of routine cancer screening.

The panel's guidelines had long advised men over 75 to forgo the tests and the new recommendation extends that do-not-screen advice to healthy men of all ages.
Too much PSA, or prostate-specific antigen, in the blood only sometimes signals prostate cancer is brewing. It also can mean a benign enlarged prostate or an infection. Worse, screening often detects small tumors that will prove too slow-growing to be deadly. And there's no sure way to tell in advance who needs aggressive therapy

But there is harm from routine screening: impotence, incontinence, infections, even death that can come from the biopsies, surgery and radiation, Moyer said.

One study estimated 2 of every 5 men whose prostate cancer was caught through a PSA test had tumors too slow-growing to ever be a threat.

Yet Moyer said 30 percent of men who are treated for PSA-discovered prostate cancer suffer significant side effects, sometimes death, from the resulting treatment.
 






The recommendation by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, being made public on Friday, will not come as a surprise to cancer specialists.

Yet, most men over 50 have had at least one PSA blood test, the assumption being that finding cancer early is always a good thing.

Not so, said Dr. Virginia Moyer of the Baylor College of Medicine, who heads the task force.

"We have put a huge amount of time, effort and energy into PSA screening and that time, effort and energy, that passion, should be going into finding a better test instead of using a test that doesn't work," Moyer told The Associated Press late Thursday.
 






Anonymous said:
The recommendation by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, being made public on Friday, will not come as a surprise to cancer specialists.

Yet, most men over 50 have had at least one PSA blood test, the assumption being that finding cancer early is always a good thing.

Not so, said Dr. Virginia Moyer of the Baylor College of Medicine, who heads the task force.

"We have put a huge amount of time, effort and energy into PSA screening and that time, effort and energy, that passion, should be going into finding a better test instead of using a test that doesn't work," Moyer told The Associated Press late Thursday.
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So how is bostwick going to keep getting all those unneeded biopsy that they run 35 cores on and bill medicare six times medicare rates for?
 






Who cares do your work and get off cafepharma before i write you up.To many whiners in here what you don't like work people.Your lucky you have a job because obama fucked us all.
 












What do you mean? All medical providers bill more than Medicare actually pays. Medicare's rates are typically quite low, so providers make up for those low reimbursement rates with the higher reimbursements paid by most commercial payers. As far as Medicare is concerned, it matters very little what Bostwick bills Medicare, because Medicare only pays whatever their published rates are.
 


















Anonymous said:
What do you mean? All medical providers bill more than Medicare actually pays. Medicare's rates are typically quite low, so providers make up for those low reimbursement rates with the higher reimbursements paid by most commercial payers. As far as Medicare is concerned, it matters very little what Bostwick bills Medicare, because Medicare only pays whatever their published rates are.
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Who cares...
 












Anonymous said:
WASHINGTON (AP) — No major medical group recommends routine PSA blood tests to check men for prostate cancer, and now a government panel is saying they do more harm than good and healthy men should no longer receive the tests as part of routine cancer screening.

The panel's guidelines had long advised men over 75 to forgo the tests and the new recommendation extends that do-not-screen advice to healthy men of all ages.
Too much PSA, or prostate-specific antigen, in the blood only sometimes signals prostate cancer is brewing. It also can mean a benign enlarged prostate or an infection. Worse, screening often detects small tumors that will prove too slow-growing to be deadly. And there's no sure way to tell in advance who needs aggressive therapy

But there is harm from routine screening: impotence, incontinence, infections, even death that can come from the biopsies, surgery and radiation, Moyer said.

One study estimated 2 of every 5 men whose prostate cancer was caught through a PSA test had tumors too slow-growing to ever be a threat.

Yet Moyer said 30 percent of men who are treated for PSA-discovered prostate cancer suffer significant side effects, sometimes death, from the resulting treatment.
Click to expand...

The scams continue at Bostwick Laboratories.
 


















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