European Study of Prostate Cancer Screening — 23-Year Follow-up

The European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC) was initiated in 1993 to assess the effect of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing on prostate cancer mortality. Because deaths from prostate cancer are expected to rise worldwide owing to increased life expectancy and population growth, a final analysis of the long-term outcomes of prostate cancer screening is essential to understanding the benefits and harms of PSA testing.

We updated the findings from ERSPC, a multicenter, randomized study conducted across eight European countries with a focus on a predefined core age group of 162,236 men who were 55 to 69 years of age at the time of randomization. Participants were randomly assigned to the screening group and offered repeated PSA testing or to the control group and not invited for screening. The primary outcome was prostate cancer mortality.