UPDATE - Issue 06 - September 2000
Austrian Success
The findings from a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening study started in 1993 in the Austrian Tyrol have just been announced. The study began in 1993. By 1997 there was 32% decrease in prostate cancer deaths in that area of Austria, a figure which improved to 42% in 1998. Elsewhere in the country cancer deaths remained substantially unchanged.
Professor Georg Bartsch reported some of the findings to the American Urological Association in Atlanta Georgia last May. At least two thirds of Tyrolean men aged 45 to 75 were tested at least once in the first four years of the study. Elsewhere in the country there was no screening programme. The incidence of prostate cancer peaked in the area in 1994 and then declined.
The study certainly suggests that making PSA testing available to men in the Tyrol led to the detection of more potentially curable cancers as well as a reduction in prostate cancer mortality.