What is Overdiagnosis and Why is it Bad?
Overdiagnosis is one of the most harmful and costly problems in modern healthcare
Overdiagnosis refers to the diagnosis of a medical condition that
would not have produced any symptoms or problems if left undiagnosed.
The incidence of overdiagnosis has risen sharply with the use of
screening tests nowadays, because of the importance laid on detecting potentially deadly or curable illnesses before they produce symptoms.
Some classic examples include prostate or breast cancer, which can be
caught early and have excellent cure rates at early stages.
The unexpected fallout of this has been the detection of other
abnormalities that are not going to create symptoms if left untreated. Overdiagnosis could include, for instance, the detection of indolent
tumors that typically grow so slowly that the individual dies of old
age without ever knowing about the presence of the tumor.
Once the tumor is detected, however, both the patient and the
physician face a dilemma. Patients typically feel distressed at doing
nothing about the tumor, even if they are reassured that it will most
probably never be aggressive. In such cases, a "harmless" tumor will
be treated unnecessarily, which is called overtreatment, often
involving therapies that have their own risks or significantly reduce
the quality of life.
An Australian study showed that one in five common cancers was
detected by overdiagnosis, using over three decades of data. This
means that over 11,000 and 18,000 women and men were told they had
cancer when they actually had incidental tumors.
Other conditions that are typically overdiagnosed include aneurysms
and spinal disc abnormalities.
https://www.news-medical.net/health/What-is-Overdiagnosis-and-Why-is-it-Bad.aspx
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