Prostate Cancer Screening: Facts, Statistics, and Interpretation in Response to the US Preventive Services Task Force Review
Cet article livre un regard critique sur les récentes recommandations d'un groupe d'experts américains en défaveur de l'usage du test PSA pour le dépistage d'un cancer de la prostate
Recently, the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) published a review of the evidence for screening for prostate cancer and made a clear recommendation against screening. By giving a grade of “D” in the recommendation statement that was based on this review, the USPSTF concluded that “there is moderate or high certainty that this service has no net benefit or that the harms outweigh the benefits.” (p3)
Whether these harms of screening, overdiagnosis and overtreatment, are justified by the benefits in terms of reduced prostate cancer mortality is open to reasonable doubt. As such, we can understand why a guideline group might recommend against prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening, particularly the way in which it is currently practiced in the United States. That said, theUSPSTFreport contained a number of important errors of fact, interpretation, and statistics.
Journal of Clinical Oncology , article en libre accès, 2012