Times Article 04/10/254 Oct 2025 14:16
Here are some points taken from an article headed: “NHS advisers set to reject call for routine prostate screening.”
“Although it (prostate cancer) is becoming more common, there are no systematic checks for the disease, unlike for conditions such as breast and bowel cancer.”
“… the Times has been told by senior government figures that the committee (the National Screening Committee) is expected to conclude that the harms of screening still outweigh the “modest” benefits.
PSA blood tests used to check for prostate cancer are notoriously unreliable, even though the use of MRI scans has improved diagnosis. There is also the acute problem of what to do if screening picks up a tumour. With the majority of prostate cancers it is very difficult to distinguish ones that will kill if left untreated from those that will never cause serious problems.
Experts expect the committee to conclude that even though one life would be saved for every few hundred men screened, this is not worth the far larger number of men who would end up with serious side-effects such as incontinence and impotence as a result of the treatment.
A recent European study estimated that about 40 men risked side-effects through needless treatments such as surgery and radiotherapy for each life saved by screening.”
Professor Hasim Ahmed, chair of urology at Imperial College “is leading a major trial designed to test different methods of screening, and then assess whether the best of them saves lives without causing too much harm, but it could take more than a decade to produce conclusive results.”
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