You've been getting annual blood tests to check for prostate cancer. But two big studies in the New England Journal of Medicine just found that screening for PSA -- prostate specific antigen -- doesn't save many lives. Should you keep checking it?

Your biopsy was negative for prostate cancer but your PSA keeps rising. Should you stop worrying -- or have another biopsy?

You've been diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer. It's probably harmless, but it could turn lethal. Should you just watch it or treat it aggressively and run the risk of impotence or incontinence?

Prostate cancer poses some of the most vexing questions in medicine, and one out of every six men in the U.S. will confront them at some point in their lives. Today's Health Journal is the first of a two-part series that aims to provide some guidance. This article looks at new diagnostic techniques that may help to resolve some of these quandaries. Next week we'll examine the perplexing array of treatment options and weigh the pros and cons of each.

Should You Be Screened?

For all the uproar they created, the recent NEJM studies settled little in the long-running debate over whether prostate-cancer screening is worthwhile.