Re:Jump in cancer diagnoses at 65 implies patients wait for ...
by jac241 on Thursday April 01, 2021 @06:13AM
(#26658574)
Maybe the urology society pushes for PSA tests but the USPTF - https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/topic_s... - the set of guidelines that medical students in the US are taught do not recommend PSA screening.
Further, 5-year mortality rates can be affected by palliative care philosophy too - do you keep giving chemo to folks who won't recover?
In fact, if you look at the mortality rate for most cancers instead of the 5 year survival rates, they're basically the same across the Australia, the UK and the US.
Prostate cancer in particular is interesting because the US continues to advocate for early screening and PSA antigen tests, but the NHS has found that there's no scientific basis for this, and PSA screening for prostate cancer actually does more harm than good [1]
This is just a misinterpretation of the data.tl;dr: 5 year survival rates measure, in a lot of cases, the rate of early detection, not cure. At least, that's the inherent bias. Your study uses 5 year survival rates not mortality rates, hence this is illustrating differences in testing philosophy not efficacy. More, early testing is not necessarily better. It's often worse.
[1] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/prostate-cancer/psa-testing/
[2] https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20150401.04603...