Younger men urged to have prostate cancer test (Australia)

Meredith Griffiths reported this story on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 08:21:00

TONY EASTLEY: Prostate cancer kills more than 3,000 Australian men every year. The conventional wisdom has always been that if there's no family history of the disease, men don't really need to worry about it until after they're 50, but urologists have changed their mind and they now want all men over 40 to be tested.

Meredith Griffiths reports.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: When Ross Jefferey was in his early 40s, prostate cancer was far from his mind.

ROSS JEFFEREY: I had a vague awareness about prostate cancer as being something that typically affects old men and you know I knew that in the 50s you should be starting to talk to your doctor about it, but not as a 45, 46 year old, it wasn't on my radar.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: So he was shocked when his 46-year-old brother was diagnosed with the disease.

ROSS JEFFEREY: He was going for a knee operation and his GP said, well we'll do the usual round of blood tests beforehand, and amongst that was a PSA test that popped up as being high, and after a biopsy he found himself having an operation to remove his prostate which was found to be cancerous.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: PSA is the measure by which doctors gauge a man's risk of getting prostate cancer. Regular blood tests over the next two years showed that Ross Jefferey's PSA levels were getting higher and in 2007 he had surgery to remove cancer.

Dr David Malouf says Mr Jefferey is just one of about 500 men under the age of 50 to be diagnosed with prostate cancer each year in Australia and New Zealand.

DAVID MALOUF: Forty-eight-year-old men dying of prostate cancer, 54-year-old men dying of prostate cancer. We know that those men, if their cancer had been picked up five, 10 or even 15 years earlier the vast majority of those men who are incurable at diagnosis could have been identified earlier, could have been treated and cured.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Dr Malouf is the president of the Urological Society of Australia and New Zealand which is now recommending that men get tested for prostate cancer once they turn 40.

DAVID MALOUF: The age of 50 has been the accepted wisdom for at least 10 or 15 years, but based upon a couple of studies which have matured over the last 12 months, we know that an early PSA test at the age of 40 is a predictor of a man's subsequent risk of prostate cancer.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Men simply have to go to their GPs and Dr Malouf says there's no doubt that changing the policy will save lives.

DAVID MALOUF: For the vast majority of men at 40, their PSA test will be very, very low and they can be reassured that their risk of prostate cancer is low and they can have much lower frequency of testing. However for a small group of men, their PSA will be in a higher range and they will need to be more carefully monitored.

TONY EASTLEY: The president of The Urological Society of Australia and New Zealand, Dr David Malouf, the reporter Meredith Griffiths.

Younger men urged to have prostate cancer test