I read Dr. Susman’s editorial on PSA screening (J Fam Pract. 2011;60:319) with great personal interest.
I am 43 years old; I have no family history of prostate cancer and had no symptoms. Yet my Gleason 7 prostate cancer was found by a PSA test. You can argue that statistically, it would be better that I be allowed to die so that 722 others could be spared the stress of testing, some subset of those could be spared a biopsy, and some still smaller subset could be spared overtreatment. But my PSA test wasn’t “screening nonsense,” as Dr. Susman laments. It was ordered by a wise and caring physician and it saved my life.
Go ahead and take a position based on statistics. But please don’t dismiss the judgment of other knowledgeable professionals as “nonsense.”
Scott Orwig
Saline, MI