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Updated: Jun 9, 2025
Microarray-based Identification of Individual HERV Loci Expression: Application to Biomarker Discovery in Prostate Cancer
Published on: November 2, 2013
Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) testing in a general practice 2009-2019
Niall Maguire1, Andrea Moloney2, Krzysztof Fic3
1Bedford Medical Centre, Navan, Ireland. niall.maguire@icgp.ie.
Background:
Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing is not recommended as a population screening measure for prostate cancer. PSA testing is nevertheless widespread and is associated with harm due to false-positive test results, overdiagnosis and economic costs.
Aims:
This study sought to document the exposure of patients to PSA testing over a decade in a general medical practice setting.
Methods:
Laboratory results for each year were extracted from the clinical record. A chart review was undertaken for cases of prostate cancer.
Results:
We report 13,743 PSA results in 3313 men. In any year, 18% of all men and 33% of men aged over 50 years had at least one PSA test. Between 4.8 and 21% of first tests exceeded age normal values depending on age. There were 113 incident cancers in the study interval of which 84 (74%) were screen detected. Mortality was lower in screen-detected than symptomatic cancers.
Conclusions:
Men at our practice are significantly exposed to PSA testing. We found evidence of possible overdiagnosis.
