Much of the controversy surrounding prostate cancer screening has related to a lack of high quality evidence demonstrating that prostate cancer screening saves lives and reduces the mortality from prostate cancer. Recent evidence has demonstrated that prostate cancer screening does save lives. A large trial recently published in the world renowned New England Journal of Medicine, demonstrated that PSA based screening reduced the death rate from prostate cancer by 20%. The trial which was conducted in Europe, studied 162 000 men over a prolonged period and is known as the ERSPC Trial (European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer). The results of the ERSPC trial demonstrated that for every 1 000 men screened for prostate cancer, 48 would need to be treated to save 1 life.