Research Assessment #9

Date: November 13, 2020

Subject: What Cancer Screening Statistic tells us

Citation:"What Cancer Screening Statistics Really Tell Us." National Cancer Institute, www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/screening/research/what-screening-statistics-mean.

Assessment:

According to research, colorectal, lung, and breast cancer screening saves lives for some common cancer types. The amount of benefit is not entirely understood. This research can help me develop my original works project to fully understand the impact screening truly has on people's lives and the types of screenings that are most crucial.

One of the things that I find the most interesting is that in women age 50-59, getting mammography screening only saves one out of 1,300. This statistic does not take into fact the false-positives, which include invasive and unnecessary follow-ups.

To test the necessity of screening, one cannot consider the improvement in survival. If two people die from cancer simultaneously, but if obtained screening while the other had symptoms, the only assumption we could make is that one knew they had cancer longer. This study doesn't necessarily give the statistics that the one who developed symptoms wouldn't die at the same time if screened ten years earlier. The results would be an example of lead-time bias, a phenomenon where the early diagnosis of a disease falsely makes it look like people survive longer. Therefore by using this measurement, the data is inaccurate because of multiple variables. Although cancer screenings can only catch cancer early on, it is important to note one still seeks and decides upon treatment afterward.

Another problem with screening is that it is more likely to pick up slower-growing cancers that don't necessarily need treatment during a patient's life. This overdiagnosis can lead to inaccurate number's in the number of cancer treatments that can save lives. If a person's chances of dying from a particular cancer are small, then there is not much risk to reduce. I can apply this to my original works by focusing more on cancer that will need treatment once found earlier to give my audience screening that will most likely benefit them.

To accurately measure the number of lives saved, one has to set up a randomized trial that shows that it recognizes cancer deaths in people assigned to screening compared to people assigned to usual care (control group).

Deciphering how to measure the effects of preventative screening accurately is tricky for even experienced Doctors to interpret. Dr. Steven Woloshin did a study, the co-director of the Center for medicine and media at The Dartmouth Institute, and professor of medicine had doctors pick between two statistical data from experiments to find an accurate one. Seventy-six percent of the doctors got the investigation incorrect, showing how difficult it is to deceiver the long term survival rate due to preventative screening. However, these facts are not a part of the standard medical school curriculum, understanding how to read and correctly interpret these statistics, and how to see through exaggerations. So the question remains: to what extent preventative screening truly has benefited the population as a whole, and how does it affect long-term treatments? Through my original works, I hope to deliver the screening needed for most people and the importance of screening as a whole to help better educate those around me.