健康英语新闻:Australia's general practitioners do not recommend prostate screening for 40-year-old men

SYDNEY, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- Australia's general practitioners ( GPs) will not back the idea of routine prostate cancer tests for men as young as 40 despite growing calls for regular screening, the nation's largest professional general practice organization said on Tuesday.

Spokesman for the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), Professor Chris Del Mar said there was not enough solid evidence to suggest major benefits from routine screening and that current tests were unable to detect "nasty" and potentially deadly forms of prostate cancer from ones that will not cause any harm.

"The problem is you end up treating lots of people who don't need to be treated," Del Mar said, adding that treatment could leave men impotent and with incontinence problems.

"You will treat 20 times as many people than would have ever been bothered by it. We don't yet know that treating prostate cancer is better than not treating it. We are not sure it does any good and could be doing more harm," he said.

On the other hand, Australia's urologists and pathologists both want men aged 40 and over who are worried about developing the disease to be offered tests.

The Royal College of Pathologists (RCPA) on Tuesday released an official recommendation on routine screening for men aged 40 and over if they were concerned about prostate cancer.

The pathologists argue that blood tests for prostate cancer in men under 50 can predict their future risk of developing the disease by measuring their prostate specific antigen levels (PSA).

They say that men with high PSA levels for their age should be tested annually, while those PSA levels are below the average could be tested less frequently.

Their call for more routine testing contrasts with recommendations for GPs, whose `Red Book' medical guide does not support regular screening.

Instead, it suggests GPs should inform men aged 50-70 of the risks and benefits of screening and only test if the patient requests one.

RACGP spokesman Del Mar, who co-wrote the RACGP's recommendations, said while the Red Book was being revised "we are not going to liberalize it".

Prostate cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer in Australia.

About 20,000 cases of prostate cancer are diagnosed each year, with 3,300 men dying.

Given the debate around prostate cancer tests, the Royal College of Pathologists wants to work with GPs, urologists and other medical organizations to develop a consensus on how and when to test for the disease, in a similar way to how experts approach breast cancer.

"It would be a good outcome for prostate cancer if we worked towards developing more of an umbrella document which reflected consensus among different stakeholder organizations. ," RCPA President Paul McKenzie said.