Australian Surgeons support prostate cancer blood test

Australian men are being urged not to turn their backs on the blood test used to detect prostate cancer.

The peak body for the nation’s urological surgeons says a major US study into the effectiveness of the Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) test was flawed, and it was wrongly undermining public confidence.

A question mark has long hovered over the PSA test, and it appears no closer to resolution as the US research is also contradicted by a new European study showing it does save lives.

Despite the controversy, the Urological Society of Australia and New Zealand (USANZ) says Australian men should continue to have the test, in consultation with their doctor.

“We are concerned that Australian men may be persuaded against having a potentially life-saving PSA test following media reports of this study,” says USANZ president Dr David Malouf.

“The position of this professional body remains that patients should have access to PSA-based testing if they wish, after discussion with their family doctors and or specialists about the risks and benefits.”

Both the US study and the European study were published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The European study took in 162,000 men, aged 55 to 69, across eight countries and it found routine prostate cancer screening could cut death rates from the disease by 20 per cent.

The overriding concern with the test is that it results in a high level of false positives, meaning men can be unnecessarily put on treatments which alone can cause harm.

The US study involved 76,000 men and it did not demonstrate a benefit from testing.

Dr Malouf said the conflicting research findings should be clarified, and there were “fundamental flaws in the (US) study design which make the result of this trial less valid”.

There is no routine PSA testing of men in Australia, Dr Malouf said.

The chance of false positives was further reduced by monitoring men suspected of having the cancer “without active treatment in the medium and long-term”.

“There is firm data that testing reduces the risk of being diagnosed with advanced disease, and that treating prostate cancers following diagnosis can lead to a reduced risk of dying from the disease compared to no treatment,” Dr Malouf says.