Urologist’s Perspective on Progress Toward Making Prostate Cancer a Chronic Disease

At the third session of PHEN’s 20^th Annual African American Prostate Cancer Disparity Summit, Dr. Mark Pomerantz, a medical oncologist from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, provided a presentation about prostate cancer screening and discussed the dangerous recommendation against screening from the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) made in 2012.

After the recommendation came out, “we now know that, over the next 10 years, rates of PSA screening plummeted and it had real-life consequences,” said Dr. Pomerantz. “The rates of metastasis at diagnosis began to increase. The change in the screening rates impacted how patients were diagnosed and how they were doing.”

“The goal of screening is to catch it early,” emphasized Dr. Pomerantz.

He also explained that the USPSTF changed their recommendation by 2019, outlining that patients should have a conversation with their doctors about whether to have a PSA screening test. Yet, that leaves the healthcare community with the problem of overdiagnosis, Dr. Pomerantz said. However, he detailed improved imaging as a potential solution to overdiagnosis. He discussed curative therapies, PSMA PET scans, and stereotactic body radiation therapy.