The PDQ cancer information summaries are reviewed regularly and updated as new information becomes available. This section describes the latest changes made to this summary as of the date above.

Evidence of Benefit

Added text to state that because prostate cancer has a relatively slow course, it is possible that the relatively short follow-up period in this study precluded the observation of a benefit, which might accrue only after 10 or more years from the time of screening.

Added text to state that because most prostate cancers that are detected today with PSA screening are not palpable, the Swedish study may not be directly generalizable to the average newly diagnosed patient in the United States.

Added text to state that there is a risk of overdiagnosis and overtreatment associated with PSA testing, i.e., the detection of a histological malignancy that if left untreated would have had a benign or indolent natural history and would have been of no clinical significance.

Added text to state that a report from the European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer trials demonstrated that while more frequent screenings lead to more diagnosed cancers, the detection rates for aggressive interval cancers was very similar with the different screening intervals in place in Rotterdam and Gothenburg (cited Roobol et al. as reference 66).

Added text to state that it is now known that systematic changes to the histological interpretation of biopsy specimens by anatomical pathologists has occurred during the PSA screening era, i.e., since about 1985, in the United States (cited Albertsen et al. as reference 70 and Thompson et al. as reference 71).

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