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Even proponents of aggressive prostate cancer screening and treatment acknowledge that very old men and those with major comorbidities are unlikely to benefit. Two studies demonstrate that this message is not getting across to clinicians.
Researchers extracted data from U.S. national health interview surveys in which about 15,000 men (age, ≥40) were asked whether they had received prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening during the previous year; about 3000 men were 70 and older. The reported prevalence of screening was about 45% among men aged 70–79 and was still 25% among those aged ≥85. In contrast, about 30% of men in their fifties underwent screening.
In a study from two U.S. veterans hospitals, researchers described patterns of treatme…