Prostrate Cancer screening and surgery updates.

In the last few days there have been two articles in ScienceDaily about the value of screening for Prostrate cancer and surgical practices which may interest gentlemen of a certain maturity.

The first Many elderly men are undergoing unnecessary PSA screenings, researchers find refers to a new study on the use of prostate-specific antigen (PSA)-based prostate cancer screening in the United States found that many elderly men may be undergoing unnecessary prostate cancer screenings. Using data from surveys conducted in 2000 and 2005, researchers report that nearly half of men in their seventies underwent PSA screening in the past year -- almost double the screening rate of men in their early fifties, who are more likely to benefit from early prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment. Further, men aged 85 and older were screened just as often as men in their early fifties.

The second Robot-assisted prostate surgery is safe, long-term study finds reports that in the first study of its kind, urologists and biostatisticians have found that robot-assisted surgery to remove cancerous prostate glands is safe over the long term, with a major complication rate of less than one percent. The findings follow an earlier Henry Ford study that found nearly 87 percent of patients whose cancerous prostates were removed by robot-assisted surgery had no recurrence of the disease after five years.