This article brings up a hot topic in the
medical world: overdiagnosis. This
term is used to describe when people test positive for a condition when no
symptoms will ever show or no disease will develop. As fear of a condition accumulates, more people are going to
several doctors, ordering more tests to be done, and are essentially doing more
harm than good. Every test has an
uncertainty rate and having more tests done increases chance of misdiagnosing
or overdiagnosing the problem. A
study cited in the article revealed that categories of 25% of breast cancers,
50% of lung cancers, and 60% of prostate cancers are overdiagnosed. In turn, patients go through therapies
even though the cancers may eventually either regress on their own, or the
patient would die of other causes before a cancerous death.
These therapies end up harming the patient
more than doing good.
Unfortunately, the author states there is ultimately no right answer for
the tradeoff between taking action to potentially avert a cancer death and the
likelihood of overdiagnosis, and is ultimately a personal choice. Once I read this statement, I
immediately understood why most people choose to have too many tests done. I figured it was because they would
rather do something about a potential disease than not do anything and have one
develop. However, upon looking at
statistics I cited above, maybe we should start thinking about having more
consideration whether we are being tested too much, leading to unnecessary
procedures, rising medical costs, and predisposition to future cancers, among
other conditions. So what’re your
all opinions on the matter? Should
we continue with testing all we like, have some type of regulation as to how
many we get done, or go with a healthy medium?
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