NMA Statement on Prostate Cancer Specific Antigen

BY NATIONAL MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
November 12, 2011


The National Medical Association's Urology Section's Experts Speak to the Recent Changes in the Recommendations for Prostate Cancer Screening

The National Medical Association (NMA) is the nation's oldest and largest association of African American physicians, representing over 50,000 physicians and the millions of patients that they serve.  The NMA is the trusted resource of the nation on issues of health for disadvantaged and communities of color.

Prostate cancer continues to pose a significant health concern in the United States.  It is estimated that 240,890 American men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2011.  Additionally, approximately 33,720 men are expected to succumb to this disease. It is second only to lung cancer in cancer-related deaths.(1)

Significant racial disparities exist for African American men diagnosed with prostate cancer. In fact, African American men have a 60% higher incidence of the disease and 2-fold higher mortality compared to other ethnic groups in the United States. Efforts at early detection of the disease are particularly critical in African American men as they are  approximately 3 - 4 times more likely to present with distant and incurable cancer than Caucasian men.(2,3)

Recently, there have been concerns that PSA screening results in over diagnosis and overtreatment of prostate cancer along with harmful effects to patients. Recommendations have been made by a federal panel to limit the use of PSA as a screening test. These recommendations are primarily based on observations from large clinical studies performed in Europe, Canada, and the United States; very few African American men participated in these studies. As a result, the findings of these studies may not be generalizable to the African American community.

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