Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2016 Jan;195(1):66-73.
doi: 10.1016/j.juro.2015.07.099. Epub 2015 Aug 6.

Prostate Needle Biopsy Outcomes in the Era of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Recommendation against Prostate Specific Antigen Based Screening

John S Banerji  1 , Erika M Wolff  1 , John D Massman 3rd  1 , Katherine Odem-Davis  2 , Christopher R Porter  1 , John M Corman  3
Affiliations

Prostate Needle Biopsy Outcomes in the Era of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Recommendation against Prostate Specific Antigen Based Screening

John S Banerji et al. J Urol. 2016 Jan.

Abstract

Purpose: We determined whether the characteristics of patients undergoing prostate needle biopsies and prostate needle biopsy results changed after the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendation in 2012 against prostate specific antigen based screening for prostate cancer for men of any age.

Materials and methods: A prospective database of patients undergoing prostate needle biopsies at Virginia Mason from 2004 to 2014 was reviewed. Welch's t-test and chi-square tests were used to compare patients seen before to those seen after the USPSTF recommendation. Relative risks and corresponding confidence intervals were estimated by general linear regression.

Results: Patients in the post-USPSTF group (310) had a higher prostate specific antigen (p <0.001), were more likely to be diagnosed with higher clinical stage (2b, p=0.003; 2c-3a, p=0.027) and D'Amico high risk prostate cancer (p=0.036), with an adjusted relative risk for high risk prostate cancer of 1.25 (95% CI 1.02-1.52) compared to those in the pre-USPSTF group (1,416). Limiting the pre-USPSTF group to the 30 months before the draft guidelines (448 patients) yielded similar results. The absolute number of biopsies performed decreased by 31%, with the majority of the decrease occurring in the detection of intermediate risk tumors.

Conclusions: In the 2 and a half years after the USPSTF recommendation against prostate specific antigen based screening, patients undergoing prostate needle biopsies were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with high risk disease. However, a reduction in the number of prostate needle biopsies performed occurred concomitantly with a decrease in the detection of intermediate risk, potentially curable prostate cancer. Future focus on informed application of screening techniques may prevent the reversal of decades of improvement in the prostate cancer mortality rate.

Keywords: biopsy; early detection of cancer; government agencies; needle; prostate-specific antigen; prostatic neoplasms.

PubMed Disclaimer

Publication types

Substances