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The pros and cons of PSA tests for prostate cancer for midlife and older men (www.npr.org)

submitted 3 weeks ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/health@lemmy.world

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News that Joe Biden has advanced prostate cancer has revived long-standing questions about the benefits versus the harms of a blood test that screens for the most commonly diagnosed cancer among men in the U.S.

Prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, screening tests are an imperfect tool for detecting prostate cancer, doctors and public health experts say.

Part of the problem is identifying and treating aggressive cancers like Biden's while not unnecessarily treating men with slow-growing cancers unlikely to sicken them. Autopsies found the disease to be so widespread that more than one-third of white men and half of Black men in their 70s had prostate cancers that would never do any harm.

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[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

The reason they stop recommending it at 70 is most men that age are retired, have other health issues, and would likely die from chemo before cancer.

We were told Biden was the picture of health, so it would make no sense to stop checking if he had the strength for treatment and a long enough time left for it to be worth it.

For an average American further testing is expensive, the president of the USA can afford to do further testing after the PSA to see what was happening.

There's just no fucking excuse to not do this routine screening on the president.

And it's more plausible that they've known a long time then they really just didn't want to run a fucking blood sample for prostate cancer on an 80 year old US president.

You need a trumpian level disconnect from reality to believe this shit, and it's disappointing so many are.