Prostate cancer has no symptoms in the early stages, but it can be detected with a simple blood test. Elevated levels of a protein in your blood suggest something is amiss in your prostate. Which can be confirmed by follow up testing including a biopsy of the prostate if necessary.
But is all the attention paid to PSA testing merited? what unintended consequences does this produce as a result? do enough good outcomes result to make pre-emptive screening worthwhile?
That’s a good question or two or three, don’t you think? Because if more cancers are detected then more are treated. the issue of monitoring for prostate cancer symptoms aside, over treatment is one potential result. Which is a problem in its own right because not all prostate cancers warrant treatment. With a secondary issue being that treatments often produce unpleasant side effects which would be avoided had not a course of treatment been under taken in the first place.
So while it’s true we wish for a simple formula that produces easy to understand recommendations, cancer often doesn’t work like. and prostate cancer doesn’t work like that even more.