In 2014, the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care recommended against the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test used to screen for prostate cancer in healthy men, concluding that it results in substantial harms via biopsies and surgeries that can lead to infections, impotence or urinary incontinence, and does not save men’s lives. “Amazingly, despite thousands and thousands of patients included in randomized controlled trials, there is no mortality benefit associated with PSA testing, not a sliver,” said task force member Dr. Eddy Lang, head of emergency medicine at the University of Calgary. The task force urged doctors who offer the PSA test to discuss its “unclear benefits and substantial harms” with patients, rather than simply presenting it as a tool for cancer screening.

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