Population- based medical screening is offered to all individuals within an identified target population for example sex or age.
Screening is a purposeful application of tests that is directed at a population that is asymptomatic to distinguish the individuals that are ‘unlikely’ to develop /have a disease or illness from those that are ‘likely’ to develop/have a disease or illness.
The UKNSC defines screening to be; “a process of identifying apparently healthy people who may be at increased risk of a disease or a condition”.
In my opinion, there are many negative sides to screening. For examples, misdiagnosis can occur. In this case there can be ‘false-positives’, meaning that patients are not correctly identified as being at risk which would lead to further investigations and sometimes over treatments that are not necessary. There can also be ‘false-negatives’ where patients will not be offered further investigations and treatments that are necessary.
Screening is also very costly which is another negative. For example, breast cancer screening programmes in England is now believed to be 96 million pounds per year.
Risk/harm of breast cancer screening: Any type of x-ray involves some amount of radiation but mammograms only need a very low dose. It is very unlikely that such a low dose can cause a cancer. The NHS says; “the risk that such a low dose could cause a cancer is far outweighed by the benefits of early detection of breast cancer”.
Benefits of breast cancer screening: is a way to detect breast cancer early and according to the NHS “around a third of breast cancers are now diagnosed through screening”.
Also according to the NHS, in “2010, the benefit of mammographic screening in terms of lives saved was much greater than the harm in terms of over-diagnosis. Between 2 and 2.5 lives are saved for every over-diagnosed case”.
