Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Improved secondary testing could make Routine prostate cancer screening effective

Prostate cancer: should PSA screening be routine? - Medical News Today
Routine prostate cancer screening 'reduces deaths but leads to overdiagnosis' - Medical News Today
Results of a major European study reveal that routine prostate cancer screening reduces deaths from the disease by more than a fifth (21%). But as it also leads to high rates of overdiagnosis, researchers say it is too early to recommend routine screening for the cancer.
Besides the dead guys can't complain, and many men would be treated to expensive, unneeded biopsies. Use of PSA test as a trigger for improved secondary non-invasive testing such as the SERS/SVM technique, Hybritech p2PSA and Multiparametric 3T MRI imagery to filter the false positives and direct biopsies instead of the current scatter-gun approach might be a better solution. 

New method for non-invasive prostate cancer screening - Medical News Today

a team of researchers led by Shaoxin Li at Guangdong Medical College in China has demonstrated the potential of a new, non-invasive method to screen for prostate cancer, a common type of cancer in men worldwide. They describe their laboratory success testing an existing spectroscopy technique called surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) with a new, sophisticated analysis technique called support vector machine (SVM).


As they described in a new paper in Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing, they combined SERS and SVM and applied them to blood samples collected from 68 healthy volunteers and 93 people who were clinically confirmed to have prostate cancer. They found their technique could identify the cases of cancer with an accuracy of 98.1 percent.
Recently-Approved Devices > Access® Hybritech p2PSA on the Access Immunoassay Systems – P090026
 For prostate cancer screening, new technique may prove effective - ONA
New Method for Non-Invasive Prostate Cancer Screening | American Institute of Physics
Using MRI To Diagnose And Treat Prostate Cancers | Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Some Cancer Experts See 'Overdiagnosis' and Question Emphasis on Early Detection - WSJ

An article by Melinda Beck in today’s issue of The Wall Street Journal discusses the complex topic of screening, “over-diagnosis”, and over-treatment of low-risk forms of certain cancers (prostate cancer
specifically included).


Whether one thinks that “screening” (as opposed to risk-based testing) is a good idea of not. Ms. Beck has done a very nice job of summarizing the issues for a large audience of readers of the WSJ.

Creating predictive tool that lets prostate cancer patients decide which treatment is right for them - Medical News Today
After a diagnosis of prostate cancer, men have multiple treatment options, including surgery to remove the prostate and several types of radiation therapy. They can receive external beam radiation directed towards their prostate, known as intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), or undergo a procedure that implants radioactive seeds in their prostate called low dose rate brachytherapy (LDR).
Each procedure carries risks, particularly to men's urinary and sexual functioning. These symptoms are also common in men, even without treatment, so Dr. Johnson and his team asked men to report their symptoms both before and after treatment in order to track how prostate cancer therapy impacted urinary and sexual functioning.

previously:

spendergast: Raising Awareness in Prostate Cancer | San Diego 6 | Health & Beauty

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