A Simple Schema for Informed Decision Making About Prostate Cancer Screening

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Screening for prostate cancer with prostate-specific anti-gen (PSA) testing is a problematic aspect of primary care. With the exception of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which made an influential (1) but highly crit-icized (2) recommendation against any early detection ef-forts based on PSA testing, most organizations recommend that an informed decision be made by the patient after discussion with a physician. For example, the American College of Physicians is generally skeptical of the benefits of PSA testing (“for most... men, the harms will out-weigh the benefits”) but recommends that “doctors and patients should discuss the potential benefits and harms of screening ” (3, 4). Similarly, the American Urological Asso-ciation, although more favorably disposed to screening, “strongly recommend[s] shared decision-making ” (5). Implementing shared decision making in primary care