Cancer Trends Progress Report

Prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, is a protein produced by normal, as well as malignant, cells of the prostate gland. The PSA test measures the level of PSA in a man’s blood. For this test, a blood sample is sent to a laboratory for analysis. The results are usually reported as nanograms of PSA per milliliter (ng/mL) of blood.

Sometimes a PSA test can find a cancer that, if not detected through screening, would never have caused any symptoms in the person’s lifetime because it was growing so slowly that the person died of something else before any symptoms occurred. This is called overdiagnosis. Although no one ever knows if they are overdiagnosed, the harm is detecting and treating a cancer that otherwise never would have caused the person any problems in their lifetime.

In May 2018, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) published a final recommendation statement to update PSA screening guidelines for two subsets of the population:

1. for men age 70 years and older, the USPSTF recommends against PSA-based screening for prostate cancer, and
2. for men ages 55 to 69 years, that clinicians inform them about the potential benefits and harms of PSA-based screening for prostate cancer, stating that the decision about whether to be screened for prostate cancer should be an individual one.