USPSTF Updates Pancreatic Cancer Screening Recommendations

The USPSTF will continue to recommend against routinely screening for pancreatic cancer in asymptomatic patients.

The newly released Grade D recommendations serve as an update and reaffirmation to the 2004 recommendation statement on screening for pancreatic cancer.

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Using their reaffirmation deliberation process, the USPSTF reviewed newly available evidence, finding no evidence on the accuracy of imaging-based screening tests for pancreatic cancer. They also found no evidence that screening for pancreatic cancer or that treatment of screen-detected pancreatic cancer improves disease-specific morbidity or mortality or all-case mortality.

“Based on the low incidence of pancreatic cancer in the general population, the uncertain accuracy of current candidate screening tests, and the poor prognosis for pancreatic cancer even when treated at an early stage, the USPSTF found adequate evidence to bound the benefits of screening for pancreatic cancer in asymptomatic adults as no greater than small,” they wrote.

Further, the USPSTF found adequate indirect evidence defining the harms of screening and treatment of screen-detected pancreatic cancer as at least moderate, based on potential harms of false-positive results.

“Using a reaffirmation deliberation process, the USPSTF concludes that there is no new evidence that warrants a change in the prior D recommendation and reaffirms its previous conclusion that the potential benefits of screening for pancreatic cancer in asymptomatic adults do not outweigh the potential harms.”

—Michael Potts

Reference:

US Preventive Services Task Force. Draft recommendation statement: Pancreatic cancer: Screening [published online February 2019]. https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/Page/Document/draft-recommendation-statement/pancreatic-cancer-screening1.