When Screening for Prostate Cancer Comes Too Late

Prostate cancer loomed over David Weigand’s family: His uncle had the disease, and his father died of it. Yet widely followed recommendations for prostate-cancer screening didn’t consider him eligible for a test. In 2021​, he got tested anyway at his partner Cody Green’s urging. Weigand was 53 at the time​—two years below the age when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force says men should consider testing​ for levels of prostate-specific antigen, or PSA​. He had no symptoms. Weigand’s PSA levels were elevated. After a biopsy, he was diagnosed with stage-four cancer that had spread to lymph nodes in his pelvis. “My prostate was completely covered in cancer,” Weigand said. “The situation that I’m in was so preventable.”

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More patients are now getting diagnosed with prostate cancer at later stages, when it is often too late to be cured. A two-decade decline in death rates has stalled. Some doctors worry deaths could rise in coming years. “We’re finding them with disease not contained in the prostate but also in the bones, in the lymph nodes,” said Dr. James Porter, a urological surgeon in Seattle. “That’s a recent phenomenon.”

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The 16-member task force, which advises primary-care doctors on how to screen for everything from anxiety to heart disease, typically reviews guidance every five years. Its last guidance was in 2018; it hasn’t started a new review.

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Weigand, who lives in Dallas, underwent surgery and started a new drug in June in addition to hormone therapy. He has started a plant-based diet and is pushing through a lack of energy to exercise more and lose weight he gained on the medication. Earlier this summer, Green proposed. They plan to get married in the spring.

https://archive.ph/oZoIR

(Just some happy ending, for now..)