Prostate cancer around the world. An overview.

Prostate cancer screening has become very prevalent in most countries around the world since the early 1990's. A national interview study in the United States has reported 75% and the Bureau of Statistics of The Netherlands between 25% and 40% of PSA-use in men above the age of 50. PSA-driven early detection has led to an increase of prostate cancer incidence in most countries, which, later on, at least in the United States, slightly decreased and reached a steady state but returned to levels of the prescreening period. The possibility of early detection of prostate cancer is attractive to clinicians and potential patients in spite of the fact that until recently concrete evidence that screening would influence prostate cancer mortality was lacking.