With the odds of about 1 in 2 people getting cancer at some point in their lives, why isn’t it protocol for everybody to get screened for cancer of all types more often? Like maybe every few years starting at the age of twenty? It seems most times it get caught is when somebody is complaining of a symptom, often times too late.
In: Biology
screening the general population at large is more likely to find harmless things than it is to find cancer. this is called an “incidentaloma”.
these likely harmless abnormalities still require workup including biopsies or surgeries to make sure they aren’t cancer. In addition to the harm from all of these extra procedures, there’s a huge amount of anxiety and suffering around these false positive results.
the best cancer screenings are done in populations at an elevated risk using modalities that can help determine the risk of malignany and minimizes false positives
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