Many studies have tried to find an answer to this question, but the majority of them ended in giving just contradictory information, leaving patients in the dark.

 

The latest findings on the matter come from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer trial, a sweeping, a 17-year project conducted by the National Cancer Institute. They were published online March 18 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

 

Researchers involved in the trial randomly assigned 76,693 men at 10 US centers to receive either annual screening with PSA or digital rectal exams or usual care. After seven years, 2,820 cancers had been diagnosed in the screening group compared with 2,322 in the control group. After 10 years, 3,452 men in the screening group were diagnosed with cancer compared with 2,974 in the control group.

 

But the high number of cancer diagnoses did not result in a lower rate of mortality. At 7 years after the beginning of the study, there were 50 prostate cancer deaths in the screening group compared with 44 in the control group. At 10 years, there were 92 prostate cancer deaths in the screening group and 82 in the control group.

 

Another report published in the same journal was based on a European study involving 162,000 men, which found a 20 percent reduction in deaths -- which was only barely significant statistically because of the small number of deaths on which it was based.

 

“What the European study tells us is that, if you are a man who chooses screening, you are 47 times more likely to be harmed . . . than to have your life saved,” said Dr. Otis W. Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society.