Not Hair Loss News – New Tool to Determine Risk of Prostate Cancer Overdiagnosis

Snippet from the article:

Studies have found that prostate cancer is over-diagnosed in up to 42 percent of cases, prompting men to receive unnecessary treatment that can cause devastating side effects, including impotence and incontinence.

Now, researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington have developed a personalized tool that can predict the likelihood of prostate cancer over-diagnosis. They announced their findings this week in the online issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

An over-diagnosed cancer is defined as one that would never cause symptoms or pose a risk to the patient, therefore not require treatment. Treatment of such cancers provides no benefit and can only cause harm. The researchers created a nomogram, a graphical calculating device, that incorporates a patient’s age, prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level and Gleason score — which grades prostate cancer tissue based on how it looks under a microscope — to determine the likelihood that screening-detected prostate cancer has been over-diagnosed.

Read the rest — Researchers Develop Tool to Determine Individual Risk of Prostate Cancer Overdiagnosis