Prostate cancer screening improves quality of life of patients

A new study has demonstrated that men treated for prostate cancer, who were diagnosed after the start of routine screening, are less vulnerable to the disease spreading to other body parts (metastasis) within 10 years of treatment, compared to men who were treated prior to the use of routine screening.

Opponents of routine screening have argued that routine prostate cancer screening has not resulted in a meaningful improvement in survival.

But researchers in this study considered that the best way to measure the effectiveness of the screening was to examine its ability to decrease metastatic prostate cancer within 10 years, after treatment for a screened population.

"Our study showed that routine screening not only improves the patient's quality of life by stopping metastasis of the disease, but it also decreases the burden of care for this advanced disease that must be provided by the health-care system," said Chandana Reddy, lead author of the study.

"This demonstrated that the PSA (prostate specifin antigen) test is extremely valuable in catching the disease earlier and allowing men to live more productive lives after treatment," he added.

The retrospective study was based on data from 1,721 prostate cancer patients who were treated with either radiation therapy or surgery to remove the prostate gland and surrounding tissue at the Cleveland Clinic between 1986 and 1996.

To assess the impact of screening, the patients were divided into two groups according to the time of their treatment: a pre-screening era (1986-1992) or a post-screening era (1993-1996).

The study showed that within each of the three risk groups, patients treated in the pre-screening era were significantly more likely to develop the disease within 10 years of treatment, compared to men in the post-screening era.

The study was presented at the 52nd annual meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology.