Principles Of Screening Of Cancer

Screening

Patient with no complaints like signs of cancer developments or symptoms cannot be afforded treatment with screening. This helps in early detection of disease. Earlier detection will determine the life span of individual. Probability of infection and treatment is feasible by initial screening. When screening outcome is positive then individual is subjected to diagnosis of cancer. For instance if an individual shows positive mammogram this shows that female may or mayn’t develop breast cancer. To confirm this she may be subjected to needle biopsy.  Screening of cancer can never be a one time testing. It has series of cascading steps that can either benefit or harm the individual. Screening improves the quality of living and is attained after many years of exposure. Due to false positive and false negative result interruptions, screening may result in wrong elucidation. Main reason for potential harms may be because of over diagnosis and over treatment. By widespread screening of cancer cells, fatality rate decreases.

Screening criteria

Screening program is evaluated by considering 8 below mentioned criteria’s.

• Disease: This gives prior information about diseases and related problems by preclinical studies. It prevents the lethal development of normal cells.
• Positive test: Screening treatment used for cancer diagnosis should be adequately sensitive. The testing performance should not be over sensitive. Over treatment may develop potential harm in some individuals. What clinical test cannot detect can be detected by screening tests.
•  Negative test: False positive results lead to incorrect screening procedure. To reduce this number of screening test should be decreased. This ultimately reduces the negative consequence of screening.
• Availability and acceptability: Cancer treatment should be widely accepted and available to both public and physicians.
• Treatment: Effective treatment should be available for screening of cancer. It should be better than normal clinical treatment. When proper treatment is administered at right time, increases the life span of patient.
• Over treatment: When treatment sensitivity increases, overtreatment may result in development of symptoms like skin inflammation and irritation. Some individual’s immune response will not accept over reaction and may develop lesions.
• Benefits and harm: Benefit outcome should be more than harm induced. Harm may be due to improper screening test, earlier symptoms of unresolved historical diseases, downstream effects and psychological labeling effects. Irrespective of harms induced quality of an individual should increase by effective screening treatment.
• Costs: Affordable treatment cost provides health benefits. Screening helps in better understanding of cost to be spent for treatment, resources and physicians.

Questions:

• State screening criteria’s
• How over treatment may endanger the lives of people:
• How screening helps in diagnosis of cancer?