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Response: Re: Prostate-Specific Antigen Testing among the Elderly in Community-Based Family Medicine Practices

The Cancer Institute of New Jersey
Department of Family Medicine
UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
New Brunswick, New Jersey
hudsonsh{at}umdnj.edu

To the Editor: I appreciate Dr. Teichman's interest and response¹ to our article on prostate cancer screening in the elderly.² I agree with his assessment of thoughtless practice and its potential harms. After this article went to print, initial results from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer (PLCO) Screening trial were published and provide additional support for our concern that aggressive prostate cancer screening and treatment for the elderly is not effective, patient centered, or efficient. In the PLCO trial, Andriole et al³ found that prostate cancer screening provided no reduction in death rates at 7 years and that two-thirds of study participants reported no screening benefit at 10 years of follow-up. They, therefore, concluded that their results support the validity of the US Preventive Services Task Force recommendations against screening men over 75 years of age. Consequences of overdiagnosis and overtreatment are not insignificant for either patients or clinical practice.⁴ The question regarding family medicine's leadership role in the informed or shared decision making conversation is an important issue that needs to be addressed.

References

1. Teichman PG. Re: prostate-specific antigen testing among the elderly in community-based family medicine practice. J Am Board Fam Med 2009; 22: 707-8.[Free Full Text]

2. Hudson SV, Ohman-Strickland P, Ferrante JM, Lu-Yao G, Orzano AJ, Crabtree BF. Prostate-specific antigen testing among the elderly in community-based family medicine practices. J Am Board Fam Med 2009; 22: 257–65.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

3. Andriole GL, Crawford ED, Grubb RL, 3rd, et al. Mortality results from a randomized prostate-cancer screening trial. N Engl J Med Mar 26 2009; 360: 1310–9.

4. Boyle P, Brawley OW. Prostate cancer: current evidence weighs against population screening. CA Cancer J Clin 2009; 59: 220–4.[Free Full Text]

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This Article Full Text (PDF) Rapid Responses: Submit a response Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when Rapid Responses are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Google Scholar Articles by Hudson, S. PubMed Articles by Hudson, S. Social Bookmarking                      What's this?