In fact, doctors disagree over whether or not to recommend it. Screening can find it before it spreads, offering a chance for cure. The trouble is, many more men have small, slow growing prostate cancers than deadly ones. Furthermore, we do not have a sure way to tell one from the other before surgery. Thus we could cause more harm in treating several men whose cancer never would have hurt them than we would prevent in curing one whose would have.
Most prostate cancers spread and become incurable before they are found without screening.
Surgery or radiation treatment, if required, causes some men to leak urine or lose sexual function. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and the National Cancer Institute recommend against screening. Black men or men whose immediate family members have prostate cancer are at increased risk, and might benefit from screening at age 40. If that is emotionally too difficult, consider not screening at all. The reason is that if we biopsied and treated every elevated PSA, we would surely cause more harm than good.