Bloomberg: Routine Prostate-Cancer Screening Should End Due To Risks, U.S. Panel SaysProstate-cancer screening doesn't save enough lives to justify exposing men to risks of death, incontinence and impotence, a U.S. panel will say today in a report that sparked immediate criticism from patient advocates. The draft recommendations from the Health and Human Services Department's Preventive Services Task Force may prompt insurers to stop paying for tests measuring PSA, a protein associated with prostate cancer at high levels. The panel will give the public four weeks to comment (Peterson and Fay Cortez, 10/6).

CBS: Common Prostate Cancer Test Seen As UnreliableAlmost 241,000 cases of prostate cancer, and almost 34,000 resulting deaths are expected this year. Every year, thousands of Americans receive screening with a blood test called PSA in the hopes of detecting and treating prostate cancer early. But the test has come under fire in recent years, and next week a government task force is expected to make a startling announcement: men should not receive routine PSA screening. The PSA blood test has become more and more controversial over the past decade because it is notoriously poor at identifying cancer. The problem is that PSA can rise from causes other than cancer, such as infections and an enlarged prostate. And even when cancer is found, it may be growing so slowly that it never would have caused a problem (LaPook, 10/6).

This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.