Clinical use of serum prostate-specific antigen: a review

Serum Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA), in conjunction with digital rectal examination, is a common first-line clinical tool for the diagnosis of prostate cancer; therefore, it is essential that the clinical use of PSA be further developed to make it a more definitive tool. There are issues in screening with PSA, with regard to its lack of specificity (and sensitivity) and solutions involving various PSA parameters and derivatives have been suggested to address these issues. The literature on these parameters and research into factors found to influence levels of PSA are discussed in this review.