Prostate testing

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Dr Jon Rees
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by Dr Jon Rees on Tue Nov 19, 2013 3:45 pm

Re: Prostate testing

Hi

30 as far as you know or healthy as far as you know?!

Thankfully you are still on the young side to be worrying about prostate disease - benign enlargement (non-cancerous) of the prostate tends to begin in your 50's or 60's and likewise prostate cancer is rare below these ages.

There has been very interesting research published recently that suggests there may be a value in having a blood test called PSA at a fairly young age - either 40 or 50 - not because you are at particular risk at this age, but because the result can give a reasonable prediction of your long term risk of developing prostate cancer - if your result at 40 is <0.7, studies suggest you are highly unlikely to develop prostate cancer over the following 25 years, and even less likely to die from it. But, if your test is higher, e.g. above 2, you are in a higher risk category and would be advised to have a blood test every 2 years or so to keep an eye. This is now a part of European guidelines - to suggest an early PSA, possibly at age 50. However, this has not yet been adopted as a formal position in the UK.

However, I think we all hope that by the time you turn 50 we will have better more accurate tests available than PSA and perhaps this will never be relevant to our generation - but then we have been hoping for this for quite some time!
Dr Jon Rees
GP, Backwell & Nailsea Medical Group with specialist interest in Men’s Health and Urology

http://www.talkhealthpartnership.com/on ... n_rees.php

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