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He can list dozens of examples where treatments are still widely used despite it being clear that all they give patients is side-effects... "An example is PSA [prostate specific antigen] screening for prostate cancer. What the best studies tell us is that patients who have the test are equally likely to die from prostate cancer compared with those who don't," he says... "This actually does harm, because patients who test positive may undergo unnecessary prostate surgery. But the test is still being carried out." (Martin Hutchinson. "Busting modern medical myths." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6524865.stm, 4/12/07).
New Test Pinpoints Deadliest Prostate Cancers "new research showing how a genetic variation within tumour cells can signal if a patient has a potentially fatal form of the disease...Many people get treated radically but probably two-thirds of them never needed treating... Radical prostate surgery often causes debilitating side effects such as impotence and incontinence...Researchers knew that prostate cancers commonly contain a fusion of the TMPRSS2 and ERG genes, but the new study found that in 6.6 percent of cases this fusion was doubled up, creating a deadly alteration known as 2+E...Patients with 2+Edel have only a 25 percent survival rate after eight years, compared with 90 percent for those with no alterations in this region of DNA...Currently, a system called the Gleason score is used to grade which cancers require treatment and which do not, but it is subject to variability in interpretation... Doctors also use prostate specific antigen, or PSA, blood tests as a screen for early signs of prostate problems, though this test is not always a reliable indicator of cancer risk" (Reuters) |