Markus Arvendell

Markus Arvendell is a resident physician in Urology at Södersjukhuset and a PhD student at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery at Karolinska Institutet. His research focuses on prostate cancer diagnostics, with a thesis aimed at evaluating aspects of the Organized Prostate Cancer Testing (OPT) project in Region Stockholm.

Prostate cancer is the most common and most lethal cancer among Swedish men. Despite this, there is currently no screening program to enable early detection of the disease. The main reason is that PSA-based screening poses a risk of overdiagnosis and overtreatment of prostate cancer that does not require intervention. However, developments are progressing, largely thanks to the increasing role of MRI in diagnostics. In 2018, the National Board of Health and Welfare commissioned the regions to improve and standardize PSA testing, which led to the introduction of organized prostate cancer testing (OPT), now underway in most regions of Sweden. Markus’s thesis aims to contribute to the knowledge requested by the National Board of Health and Welfare, so that a national screening program for prostate cancer may be implemented in the future.