USPSTF Releases Study Proposal for Pancreatic Cancer Screening

The US Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) has released a proposed plan for conducting a systematic review of pancreatic cancer screening.¹

The proposed plan aims to answer questions about whether pancreatic cancer screening can improve associated morbidity or mortality and all-cause mortality among the general population or subpopulations.

The study will also address the diagnostic accuracy as well as the potential harms of screening and the resulting treatment.

The plan proposes to include adults with or without risk factors for pancreatic cancer in very high resource settings. The screening tests that will be assessed will be imaging modalities but not serum, stool, or saliva-based biomarkers.

The study will evaluate outcomes related to pancreatic cancer detected with and without screening, as well as outcomes associated to harms of screening and treatment of screening-detected disease.

Fair to good quality studies, including randomized controlled trials, cohort studies, and case-control studies, will be included from 2002 to present.

Public comments are accepted at the USPSTF website until May 24, 2017, and can be accessed here.

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