Since PSA testing was introduced, prostate cancer survival figures have improved. But is this due to PSA testing or something else?
For a small organ that doesn’t do much, the prostate sure generates a lot of controversy.
Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men (not counting skin cancer) and the second highest cause of cancer-related deaths. That alone should make it one of the more talked-about organs by men of a certain age.
But what gets it so much space in the newspapers and airtime on TV is the controversy about how best to screen for it and treat it.
Take screening for instance. The only lab test we have for detecting possible prostate cancers is the notoriously unreliable blood chemical called prostate specific antigen (PSA), which first became widely available in 1988.
Read the whole story at The ABC