Outdated prostate rules 'costing 200 men's lives'

CRAIG SIMCOX/Dominion Post

GET IT CHECKED: Dorren Morrison urged her husband Ian to get a pain in his side checked out - it was prostate cancer. Outdated rules in NZ could be putting more Kiwi men at risk.

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The Health Ministry's foot-dragging stance on prostate cancer screening for Kiwi men is criminal, patient advocates and doctors say.

A study by Wellington researchers of prostate screening and treatment, published in the December edition of the international journal Pathology, suggests the ministry's outdated guidelines could be costing 200 men their lives each year.

Lead researcher Associate Professor David Lamb, who heads radiology services at Wellington Hospital and chairs the Cancer Standards Institute, said the ministry did not recommend testing men with no symptoms of prostate cancer, but the study showed that early detection saved lives and money.

"The ministry needs to withdraw the outdated guidelines, provide new ones and invest more resources in encouraging New Zealand men to seek screening from their GP."

Prostate Cancer Foundation president Barry Young said the present guidelines were "absolutely criminal".

"Prostate cancer doesn't have any symptoms in the early stages - that's the insidious nature of the disease."

Despite the enthusiasm with which men embraced "Movember", when more than 25,000 grew moustaches to raise more than $1 million for the foundation, awareness of men's health issues was not high in New Zealand, he said.

Though it would be good to have a national prostate screening programme, the priority should be to promote screening for men with a family history of the disease.

"If your father or uncle or brother has had it, it's usually not a matter of if [you will get prostate cancer], it's when. There are men who are walking time bombs and they don't know it."

Professor Lamb said the traditional arguments against prostate screening - that there was a high risk of false diagnosis and unnecessary treatment - were no longer valid because screening and treatment were now very advanced.

"It is also not good enough to say that prostate cancer is slow-growing and may never cause symptoms or early death."

Professor Brett Delahunt, chairman of the institute's scientific committee, said screening had the potential to save 200 lives each year by halving the risk of a cancer not being diagnosed till it had spread.

"As about 600 men now die annually from prostate cancer, the resultant reduction in prostate cancer mortality would be substantial."

Professor Lamb said the institute was not yet recommending a population-based screening programme such as that for breast cancer, because the research was still to be completed.

"What we are saying is that men, particularly those aged 50 to 70, should feel able to request prostate screening from their GPs, and some men with a family history of prostate cancer should expect to be offered screening ... Health authorities need to update their guidance to the community and to medical practitioners."

John Childs, the ministry's principal cancer adviser, said prostate cancer testing was freely available through the public health system for men who requested screening from their doctors.

But Cancer Society president Dalton Kelly said there was a lack of public awareness of prostate cancer screening.

"I would like to think all those blokes sporting moustaches for Movember were also inspired to get themselves screened but I suspect not."

- © Fairfax NZ News