Prostate cancer screen: rectal exam not helpful
A new systematic review and meta-analysis found that digital rectal exam (DRE) did not add any useful information about detecting prostate cancer above and beyond that of PSA (prostate-specific antigen) screening (see prostate ca DRE adds little EurUrolOnc2024 in dropbox, or doi.org/10.1016/j.euo.2023.12.005) Details : -- a general search was done in August 2023 identifying prospective studies simultaneously investigating the diagnostic performance of DRE and PSA for prostate cancer (PCa) screening -- eight studies were identified including 85,738 participants, three were randomized controlled trials and five were prospective diagnostic studies, all reporting the positive predictive value (PPV) and cancer detection rate (CDR) of both DRE and PSA for the same cohort of patients -- studies were excluded if they did not have original patient data or were not formal studies, if they did not conduct both DRE and PSA on that same cohort, if they enrolled participant...