Abstract
The diffusion rate of screening for prostate cancer using PSA in Japan is still very low and many clinically significant cancer cases may be undetected and missed until they develop into clinically advanced disease. The number of deaths due to prostate cancer had increased to 11,600 in 2010 and is estimated to increase to 15,700 by 2025. Therefore, there is an urgent need to determine the best available countermeasures to decrease the rate of prostate cancer death.
Recently, the positive impact of PSA-based screening on mortality due to prostate cancer has been confirmed by large and reliable prospective randomized controlled trials. The Japanese Urological Association (JUA) recommends PSA screening to men who are at risk for prostate cancer. The recommendation should be based on fact sheets indicating merits and demerits of screening for prostate cancer and the JUA provides the best available screening system for men who want to be screened.
The JUA guidelines on PSA-based screening for prostate cancer could be of value in establishing an optimal screening system, which would decrease the mortality of prostate cancer, in the two major screening systems in Japan; population-based screening and health check-up (Ningen dock).
