Impact of the 2008 US Preventive Services Task Force Recommendation to Discontinue Prostate Cancer Screening Among Male Medicare Beneficiaries

For clinical evidence to have an impact on the health of populations, guideline recommendations must be rapidly and widely disseminated and physicians and other health care professionals must act responsively. Recommendations to discontinue care may be even more challenging. Recently, the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommended that no man receives prostate-specific antigen (PSA)-based screening for prostate cancer.1 While the impact of this recommendation will not be immediately understood in practice, the impact of the USPSTF’s August 2008 recommendation to discontinue PSA-based prostate cancer screening for men 75 years and older may inform expectations.2