Originally Posted by
JanMM
You're overlooking that it's not just about money or allocation of healthcare resources. Quality of life factors into this issue: Some of the men who receive aggressive treatment become impotent or incontinent as a result of that treatment. Very severe side effects resulting from treatment of a problem that may not be life-threatening or that may not cause significant health problems in an individual.
I think that a doctor's have become too reliant on certain tests, rather then doing some actual doctoring to resolve a problem. Say you go to your doctor and they do the finger test, hmm, feels a little off, then run a PSA test to see if it needs further investigation, if it does, then do an Ultrasound and take some measurements to see how enlarged the Prostate is. If it seems cancerous, then they can look into doing a biopsy and see if it is cancerous, if it is, then they can treat it.
Whenever though, I see a paper like this, I want to know who funded it, the PSA test is expensive, so an Insurer might not want to cover it, they would be willing to fund studies that prove against the test, to justify it. Here in Ontario, Canada, the Liberals promised to cover it for all men over 50 if reelected and they were, this will cost about $30 million dollars a year, but this may be one of the things that goes away if provincial budgets get tight.