Earlier is not necessarily better

This is the ninth in a series of 34 blogs explaining 34 key concepts we need to be able to understand to think critically about treatment claims.

This blog explains that people often assume that early detection of disease leads to better outcomes. However screening tests can be inaccurate (e.g. misclassifying people who do not have disease as having disease). Screening can also cause harm by labelling people as being sick when they are not and because of side effects of the tests and treatments.

Cancer Screening Debate

Here we will address the problem with cancer screening interventions regarding the potential benefits and harms of these strategies.

Why don’t we screen for more diseases?

There are over 100 diseases that the National Screening Committee in the UK considers screening for – but only a fraction of these are approved for one reason or another. This blog hopes to give an introduction to the issues with screening programmes, in particular those involved in detecting cancer.