Prostate Health
Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening has led to a nearly 50% decrease in metastatic prostate cancer over the past 20 years.1 However, PSA screening is not specific and cannot distinguish between indolent disease and aggressive cancer. In addition, benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), prostatitis, and trauma can all cause elevated PSA levels, making interpretation of results difficult.
The current standard of care allows healthcare providers to subjectively determine whether a patient with an abnormal PSA level should undergo a prostate biopsy for a more definitive cancer diagnosis. Almost a million prostate biopsies are performed every year in the US, exposing many men to the inconvenience, discomfort, and potential complications that accompany this surgical procedure. And since the majority of prostate cancers are indolent and require no treatment, many patients undergo unnecessary prostate biopsies resulting in overtreatment of the indolent form of the disease. Prostate biopsies may also miss or under grade cancer in 20-30% of cases. These factors suggest that a non-invasive follow-up test after an elevated PSA is needed that is specific for the risk of aggressive prostate cancer.
Get information about the 4Kscore® test, a simple way to determine if a patient is at risk for developing aggressive prostate cancer.
References
- Welch, H. Gilbert, David H. Gorski, et al. Trends in metastatic breast and prostate cancer – Lessons in cancer dynamics. New England Journal of Medicine 373.18 (2015): 1685-1687.