Reduced prostate screening could miss advanced tumors

Relaxed guidelines on prostate cancer screening may delay diagnosis and treatment of aggressive tumors, a new study suggests. In 2011, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended against routine prostate specific antigen (PSA) testing, to curb over-diagnosis and overtreatment of prostate cancer. Since then, PSA screening has dropped by 28 percent, the researchers report. "On the positive side, there is a lot of prostate cancer that we don't need to know about," said lead researcher Dr. Daniel Barocas, an assistant professor of urologic surgery at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tenn.