Disease-Specific Survival Following Routine Prostate Cancer Screening by Digital Rectal Examination: Corrected Patient Classification

To the Editor.  —It has been brought to our attention that there are discrepancies between our recently published article in JAMA¹ and the two original publications^2,3 on prostate cancer screening on which the recent article was based. Specifically, the relative number of men diagnosed with prostate cancer in the first year of screening (group 1) and subsequent years of screening (group 2) was not the same between the individual studies. This discrepancy is due in part to the addition of some patients to the study group after the publication of the original articles. However, our review of the data has also revealed that three patients were misclassified in group 2 when they were truly diagnosed in the first year of screening. In addition, the correct classification of two other patients is unclear, despite review of all available information.To assess the impact of these errors on the conclusions