A study has investigated whether there was a change in the proportion of asymptomatic men with raised PSA levels (≥3ng/mL) who were referred to urology since the launch of the Prostate Cancer Risk Management Programme (PCRMP) in November 2002.
The PCRMP provides guidelines for general practitioners (GPs) on age-specific Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) cut-off levels in asymptomatic men. The study was conducted by the Cancer Screening Evaluation Unit at the Institute of Cancer Research, and was funded by the Policy Research Programme of the Department of Health. A paper has been published in the British Journal of Cancer (Melia et al….) and the full report of the study (PDF 382Kb) is available.
The referral rate was lower than expected if the guidelines had been followed and it did not change significantly over time. Further revision and evaluation of the PCRMP guidelines is underway.
Back to prostate cancer research.