UPDATE - Issue 28 - Winter 2007
Home testing kits
Are they worth buying?
There are various home tests that measure the level of the protein Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) in your blood. They usually require a pinprick of blood from a finger. They are pretty painless to use and they give a result within a few minutes. The test's accuracy is way below that achieved by having a sample taken by a doctor and sent to a laboratory for analysis. The leaflet that comes with the kit usually says that if the PSA is below 4ng/ml there is little likelihood of the patient having prostate cancer and the test gives a yes/no answer against that somewhat arbitrary level. The leaflet suggests that if the result is above the threshold the patient should consult his GP.
For a price somewhere between £2 and £28 some men may be reassured and others may have anxiety and stress imposed upon them. Worth buying? No. Far easier to pick up the phone and book a GP appointment and do the job properly.