2.0 Body of Contents
2.1 Over-diagnosis – a common issue in many screening tests
Many health screening tests tend to produce false positive results, or find abnormalities that may not cause any harm at all to the patient. This can cause distress to patients and their families and lead to unnecessary treatment.
For example, around 6-10% of mammogram results are false positives, meaning the images show what appear to be tumors but are actually cysts or harmless tissues. This estimate may be higher in younger women, as young women have denser breast tissues which may be difficult to scan as compared to women over 50, whose breasts are mainly composed of fatty tissues (Geraci, Gordon, Gower, Harrar & Paturel, 2008). Screening for dementia produces results that are even more inaccurate - 23% of results are false positives. So even if a patient has received a positive result from the test, the chances of him having dementia are very little – only around 17%. Generation of such false positive results causes unnecessary distress to patients as well as their families (McCartney, 2014).
Moreover, the generation of positive results often leads to even more tests and subsequent treatment. In cases where the positive results are actually false, the patient might end up taking tests and treatments that are not necessary (“When to say,” 2012; Dixon, 2013; McCartney, 2014). Breast cancer screening is a noteworthy example – As mammograms tend to pick up tumors whose effects cannot be immediately fathomed, doctors simply treat all tumors, regardless of whether they are cancerous or not. Such treatments often involve mastectomy and radiation therapy, both of which can harm the patient indirectly. If the tumor detected is cancerous, such risks are wo...
... middle of paper ...
...aim.html
Geraci, R., Gordon, D., Gower, T., Harrar, S. & Paturel, A. (2008). What works, what doesn’t. Pleasantville, NY: Reader’s Digest.
Mc Cartney, M. (2014, January 3). Patients deserve the truth: Health screening can do more harm than good. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/jan/03/patients-truth-health-screening-harm-good
Monastyrsky, K. (n.d.). Side effects of screening colonoscopies. Retrieved from http://www.gutsense.org/crc/crc_side_effects.html
Pittman, G. (2013, January 3). Many people unaware of radiation risk from CT scans. Reuters. Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/03/us-many-people-unaware-of-radiation-idUSBRE9020OV20130103
When to say ‘Whoa!’ to doctors. (2012, June). Consumer Reports Health. Retrieved from http://consumerhealthchoices.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/ChoosingWiselyWhoaPkg.pdf
Martin, Ian; Carey, John; DeCoster, Karen. (2009, June 1). A national study of the current status
7. Rhodes, J., Chan, C., Paxson, C., Rouse, C. E., Waters, M. and Fussell, E. (2010), The Impact of
Page-Reeves, J., Niforatos, J., Mishra, S., Regino, L., Gingrich, A., & Bulten, J. (2011). Health
There are many risks that affect breast cancer. One of the reasons it is more common, is because we have better medical equipment that detects breast cancer at an earlier stage than before. An estimated 192,370 new cases of breast cancer will occu...
... Jaeggi, Martin Buschkuehl, John Jonides, and Walter J. Perrig March 18, 2008 (received for review February 7, 2008)
On the other hand, what if you were being tested on to see if a new kind of medicine could treat some kind of virus. Then you could help hundreds and hundreds of people. In the case, testing could be good. You never know the outcome. Scientists are currently doing research on this too. It would be great if you didn’t have to test on anything, but then you never know if a theory’s are accurate.
Percival, S. L., Thomas, J. G., Slone, W., Linton, S., Corum, L., & Okel, T. (2011). The efficacy
Marshall, G. W and S. Keene. “Radiation Safety in the Modern Radiology Department: A Growing Concern.” The Internet Journal of Radiology 5.2 2007: N. pag. 24 Apr. 2011 .
Wardle & Pope (1992) claimed that evaluating the benefits of health screening can be very difficult. This is primarily due to the fact that premature death from chronic diseases, fore example breast and cervical cancer is comparatively rare and consequently very large sam...
Prenatal testing is a test offered to pregnant women in their first trimester. These tests are often performed but for most of the findings there is no cure like for Down syndrome (Latendresse; Denenis, 2015). Most tests are performed in order to find a cure. However, prenatal genetic testing is mostly used for informative reasons. The test can only detect the high risk of a problem. Most of the time it is not used for diagnosis. Most prenatal tests are sensitivity test leading to false-positive results. Some test can be misleading. Some prenatal test is linked to the risk of pregnancy loss (Latendresse, Denenis, 2015). The risk with a test that is not 100% positive will always raise the question, is it really worth it in the end.
There are many different ethical challenges with colorectal screening, from access to care, screening methods, and treatment options. Not every person has equal access to preventative care. Education about colorectal cancer screening and access to screening tests varies by geographic location. Screening for colorectal cancer is lowest in the areas with low socioeconomic status (Macrae, 2015). Not all colorectal screening methods are available for people worldwide, so many people do not get to choose what method they want or would be medically best (van Dam & Bretthauer, 2014).
Genetic testing, also known as screening, is a rapidly advancing new scientific field that can potentially revolutionize not only the world of medicine, but many aspects of our lives. Genetic screening is the sequencing of human DNA in order to discover genetic differences, anomalies, or mutations that may prove pathological. As genetic screening becomes more advanced and easily accessible, it presents society with difficult questions that must be asked about the boundaries of science and to what degree we are allowed to tamper with the human genome. To better understand the potential impact of genetic screening on our society, we must examine the potential benefits in comparison to the possible negative impact it may cause. With this knowledge in hand, we can examine what the future holds for this field of study and the best possible direction to take.
Plecas, D., McCormick, A. V., Levine, J., Neal, P., & Cohen, I. M. (2011). Evidence-based
Stohr, M., Walsh, A., & Hemmens, C. (2013). Corrections: A Text/Reader (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Rosser, J, Lynch, P., Cuddihy, L., Gentile, D., Klonsky, J., & Merrel, R. (2007). The impact of