Welcome to the Not Old Better Show, I'm Paul Volkozang, and this is episode number 215.

As part of our Art of Living series, we're going to talk about not dying today.

I do not mean to be flip about this, as this show is an important one about the new guidelines for prostate diagnosis and detection.

Prostate diagnosis has now been updated.

Men and those of you with men in your lives pay attention.

Yesterday, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the U.S.P.S.T.F. issued new prostate cancer

screening guidelines that take a less aggressive stance

that in previous years and suggest a more nuanced risks versus harm's

approach to whether men should have a prostate- antigen or known as a PSA test, compared with the

US PSTF's earlier recommendation which was issued in May of 2012, which advised against PSA-based

screening in any men.

In advising against P.S-based screening, the US-PSTF, a government-sponsored but independent network of

national experts in disease prevention and evidence-based medicine, said that PSA testing produced more harm than good. They stopped recommending it at all.

Now that same group has finalized a tweak on those 2012 screening guidelines.

Instead of bypassing PSA entirely,

men ages 55 to 69 should have a conversation

with their physician about the risks and benefits before making their own decision on whether or not to get screened.

In advising against PSA-based screening, the USPSTF said, and I quote here from the study, there is moderate or high

certainty that the service has no net benefit or that the harms outweigh the benefits.

The new guidelines published online May 8th in the Journal of American Medical Association,

Jama, are a market departure from this position. Screening for prostate cancer, which is done via the

PSA blood test, has been a source of some controversy for years. Some say the screening is not

...