November 12, 2026
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New guidelines from the American Cancer Society recommend that men 50 to 69 and at average risk of prostate cancer get screened every two years. Men at higher risk should be screened annually.
In response to additional evidence that screening for prostate cancer helps save lives, the American Cancer Society put out revised screening recommendations Thursday – its first update since 2010 and a major shift from its earlier guidelines.
The updated recommendations advise all men ages 50 to 69 to be screened every two years for prostate cancer using a prostate-specific antigen blood (PSA) test. Previous guidelines left patients and their doctors to decide when to begin screening.
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The new guidelines also call for annual PSA screenings for men at higher risk for prostate cancer, including Black men ages 45 to 69 with a strong family history of prostate cancer. That latter recommendation is based on evidence showing Black men have higher prostate cancer incidence and mortality rates than other racial and ethnic groups, the American Cancer Society said.
Men whose tests reveal elevated PSA levels should be screened again, undergo an MRI and possibly have biomarker testing to help determine whether a biopsy is necessary, the new recommendations say.
"This is truly a reversal," Dr. Philipp Dahm, a professor of urology at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the guidelines, told the New York Times.
Prostate cancer is the second-leading cancer in men, trailing only skin cancer. Prostate cancer is also the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in men. The American Cancer Society estimates that nearly 334,000 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer and that more than 36,000 will die from the disease this year.
Dr. Bill Dahut, the organization's chief scientific officer, said in a question-and-answer post published alongside the new guidelines that the American Cancer Society "thought it was important to update our prostate cancer guideline because we now have stronger evidence that screening can lower a person's chance of dying from prostate cancer."
The American Cancer Society based its guidelines on "accumulating evidence," including a European study from last year that showed screening for prostate cancer lowered deaths from the disease by 13%.
Risks of increased and more frequent screening include false positives and unnecessary treatment. But the "harms of over-diagnosis" can be minimized by doing secondary testing before biopsy and by active surveillance of men at lower risk of prostate cancer, new guidelines say.
"The way that'll be operationalized by most physicians is they're just going to get this test on everyone," Dr. Alex Krist, a professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University and one of the co-authors of 2018 screening guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, told the New York Times. "It's a lot of harms still. And I'm not sure it's going to have the benefits they're predicting."
Those Task Force guidelines recommend that men ages 55 to 69 should get PSA screening periodically with joint decision making between patients and doctors.
The American Cancer Society's guidelines say men ages 70 to 74 should make screening decisions with the help of their doctors. The guidelines do not recommend prostate cancer screening in men 75 and older.
The recommendations also say that digital rectal exams should not be a primary method for screening for prostate cancer.
