UK National Screening Committee

So it's been quite the year for new stories and controversies about PSA and prostate screening.

Just to give a very quick summary, in November last year, we had the National Screening Committee's draft guidance on prostate cancer screening.

followed in March of this year by its final recommendations.

These were accepted by government in June.

Thanks for having me along.

let's dive straight in and i guess a good place to start would be to have a recap on the nsc's prostate screening decision could you give us a quick refresher on that

absolutely and i thought you summarized the timeline of the last 12 months or so perfectly but just for a bit of context for your listeners so The National Screening Committee is an independent body appointed to advise government on screening programs, and that includes cancer.

They have looked at the issue of PSA-based prostate cancer screening multiple times over the last 10 to 15 years.

But we decide where what we want to do.

You know, we have authorities to do that in the National Screening Committee in this particular case.

But to make those decisions, we need good evidence.

And so a lot of the time I was having to say there isn't good evidence for this or what evidence exists suggests this.

What you don't see is all the overdiagnosis, the false positives, the false negatives, the anxiety, the going down these rabbit holes, these clinical cascades of more and more invasive tests that, that are costly and potentially lead to harm.

And obviously you've got your Preventative Services Task Force in the United States, we've, we have our National Screening Committee in the UK that have very strict criteria, um, that, that were developed by the WHO several decades ago that, that determine what, what is a good screening test, test, what are the good, what you need to show to, to, to be rolled out as screening, so whether that's breast screening or cervical screening or, or, or bowel screening.

And what's interesting with the full body MRI, there isn't a single medical body in the world that recommends them for screening purposes.

But-