overdetection

The risks of overdetection and overtreatment should be included in this discussion."

The main risk of screening is overdetection — the detection of cancer that, if left untreated, would not cause death.

In this study the authors estimate the level of overdetection that might result from annual screening of men aged 50-70.

Therefore, considerable overdetection and overtreatment may exist.

Furthermore, the potential harm of overdetection, false positives and false negatives may outweigh the benefits to be accrued from PSA screening.

Growing evidence of overdetection and overtreatment in many men with low-risk tumors has led to a concept in the medical community of "watchful waiting" or observing a man's disease progression prior to initiating treatment.

After using a decision aid that included information about breast cancer overdetection, more women made an informed decision about whether they should be screened, and met the threshold for adequate overall knowledge.

Compared with controls whose decision aids did not include information about overdetection, fewer women expressed positive attitudes toward screening or intended to be screened in the future.