[Prostate cancer screening-current overview]

The harm-to-benefit ratio of prostate cancer (PCa) screening remains controversial mainly due to the unfavorable test characteristics of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) as a screening test.

In this nonsystematic review, we present a current overview of the body of evidence on prostate cancer screening with a focus on the role of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the prostate.

Evidence generated in large randomized controlled trials showed that PSA-based screening significantly decreases cancer-specific mortality. The main obstacle in developing and implementing PCa screening strategies is the resulting overdiagnosis and as a consequence overtreatment of indolent cancers. Opportunistic screening is characterized by an adverse benefit-to-harm ratio and should, therefore, not be recommended. The German Statutory Early Detection Program for prostate cancer, which consists of a digital rectal examination (DRE) as a stand-alone screening test, is not evidence-based, neither specific nor sensitive enough and results in unnecessary diagnostics. The European Commission recently urged member states to develop population-based and organized risk-adapted PSA-based screening programs, which are currently tested in the ongoing German PROBASE trial. Finetuning of the diagnostic pathway following PSA-testing seems key to improve its positive and negative predictive value and thereby making PCa screening more accurate. Incorporation of prostatic MRI into screening strategies leads to more accurate diagnosis of clinically significant prostate cancer, while diagnosis of indolent cancers is reduced. In the future, molecular liquid-based biomarkers have the potential to complement or even replace PSA in PCa screening and further personalize screening strategies. Active surveillance as an alternative to immediate radical therapy of demographically increasing PCa diagnoses can potentially further improve the benefit-to-harm ratio of organized screening.

Early detection of PCa should be organized on a population level into personalized and evidence-based screening strategies. Multiparametric MRI of the prostate may play a key role in this setting.