American Cancer Society reverses stance, urges prostate cancer screening for all men

The American Cancer Society (ACS), a leading US cancer-fighting organization, has updated its prostate cancer screening guidelines and now urges testing for all men. The change reverses its earlier position, which rested on recommendations dating from 2010. The group announced the update this week.

The ACS says new evidence gathered since 2010 shows that screening saves lives, and that advances in case management can avoid the troubling harms of overdiagnosis and overtreatment. For many men with prostate cancer, the disease will never grow or cause harm during their lifetime, yet treatment can bring erectile dysfunction and urinary incontinence.

New safeguards

Under the guidance, all men should first be informed about the risks and benefits. If a PSA (prostate-specific antigen) blood test comes back high — 3 ng/mL or above for men under 70, and 6.5 ng/mL or above for those 70 and older — the ACS recommends repeating the test before taking further steps.

If the repeat result is still high, men should have either a prostate MRI or a validated biomarker test to assess risk. A biopsy should be considered only when suspicion of cancer is high, for example with a very high PSA result.

For men diagnosed with prostate cancer that appears to be at low risk of growing or spreading, active surveillance should be the initial management strategy.

Statement from the ACS

Dr. Shanthi Sivendran, the ACS's interim chief patient officer, said in a statement that catching aggressive cancers with a simple PSA blood test opens the door to highly effective treatments, while lower-risk findings can be safely managed through careful active surveillance.

According to the ACS, prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers in men and the second leading cause of cancer death among US men. In 2026, roughly 334,000 men are estimated to be diagnosed, and more than 36,320 are expected to die from the disease.