PSA Testing Less Frequent in Primary Care

Primary care physicians are performing less prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screenings in response to the 2012 US Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendation against PSA screening, but rates have remained the same among urologists, according to new research.

The recommendation was issued after a decline in testing rates among men aged 50 to 74 years and a decline in prostate cancer diagnoses. Following the recommendations, researchers were curious about how this had influenced rates of testing among primary care physicians and urologists.
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To investigate, researchers analyzed the frequency of PSA testing from data collected in the 2010 and 2012 National Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys.

Researchers included data from 27 million men aged 50 to 74 years who visited a physician or urologist for preventive care and excluded men already diagnosed with a prostate disorder.

Researchers found a sharp decline in PSA testing among primary care physicians (from 37% in 2010 to 16% in 2012), while PSA testing among urologists declined only slightly (from 39% in 2010 to 35% in 2012).

“Moving forward, this finding emphasizes the need to continue interdisciplinary dialog to achieve a broader consensus on prostate cancer screening,” researchers concluded.

—Amanda Balbi

Reference:

Zavaski ME, Meyer CP, Sammon JD, et al. Differences in prostate-specific antigen testing among urologists and primary care physicians following the 2012 USPSTF recommendations. JAMA Intern Med. Published online February 08, 2016. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2015.7901.