Prostate cancer screening

Prostate cancer is an important and growing public health problem. PSA test ing is able to lead to the identification of large numbers of cases of pros tate cancer while still asymptomatic. This provides the potential for impor tant reductions in prostate cancer mortality through the introduction of sc reening programs. The most reliable evidence that this potential can be rea lised can only come from randomised controlled trials (RCTs). Alternative s ources of evidence are compared with that from RCTs; the costs of a wrong d ecision would be high and it is argued that the case for RCTs is clear. (C) 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc.