Some Elderly Men Get Prostate Cancer Tests Despite Limited Benefit

About one in five elderly U.S. men get invasive tests to look for prostate tumors even though they may not live long enough to benefit from treatment, a recent study suggests.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), a government-backed panel of independent physicians, in 2008 recommended against routine prostate cancer tests for men at least 75 years old or with a limited life expectancy.

For these men, it makes sense for doctors to be selective about ordering a biopsy, said Dr. Quoc-Dien Trinh, a urologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston who wasn’t involved in the study.

Source: REUTERS HEALTH NEWS