Overdiagnosis in Cancer Screening: Overcoming Challenges, Avoiding Mistakes (MtG)

The problem of overdiagnosis, the detection by screening of latent cancers that would never have surfaced, has been much in the news lately. What is overdiagnosis, and how significant is the problem?

Dr. Ruth Etzioni examines how overdiagnosis arises and discussed what it takes to validly estimate its frequency. Different types of study designs and estimation methods have been used, but many of these probably yield biased results. Consumers of overdiagnosis studies need to carefully navigate the published literature to properly understand the extent of the problem. Dr. Etzioni provides a guide using examples from breast and prostate cancer screening to identify the types of studies that are most likely to produce reliable results.