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Overdiagnosis - Coggle Diagram
Overdiagnosis
Why does it happen?
All screening tests can potentially result in overdiagnosis. This is of particular significance when it comes to cancer because a wide variety of cancer screening tests are offered.
Also, it’s often impossible to accurately predict how a tumor will develop, especially in the early stages of cancer when it is small. Tumors don't always grow a lot and become life-threatening.
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Overdiagnosis in cancer screening arises largely from the paradoxical problem that screening is most likely to find the slow-growing or dormant cancers that are least likely to harm us, and less likely to find the aggressive, fast-growing cancers that cause cancer mortality.
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So these “abnormalities” seen on the scan may not be relevant at all, yet they can lead to an unwarranted diagnosis (overdiagnosis) and unnecessary treatments.
The result is that some people with milder symptoms, or people at very low risk of ever actually getting sick, will be overdiagnosed and then treated unnecessarily.
How should we handle it?
If screening leads to the discovery of a disease that doesn't appear to be very serious and is easy to treat, then overdiagnosis is harmless.
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Overdiagnosis would be significantly less of a problem if we could accurately predict the course of the disease that is diagnosed.
With some illnesses, though, people can decide to wait and see what happens rather than starting treatment.
Furthermore, accounting systematically for the harms and benefits of screening and diagnostic tests and determining risk factor thresholds based on the expected absolute risk reduction would also help prevent overdiagnosis.
Preventing overdiagnosis requires increasing awareness of healthcare professionals and patients about its occurrence, the avoidance of unnecessary and untargeted diagnostic tests, and the avoidance of screening without demonstrated benefits
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What is overdiagnosis?
Overdiagnosis is the diagnosis of a medical condition that would never have caused any symptoms or problems. This kind of diagnosis can be harmful if it leads to psychological stress and unnecessary treatments.
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In recent decades it has become clearer that screening leads to the discovery of a different kind of “illness”: medical conditions that are “real” illnesses but would never cause any symptoms or problems, even without treatment.
It's important to know that overdiagnosis is not the same as misdiagnosis. Misdiagnosis is a wrong diagnosis. Overdiagnosis, on the other hand, is a “correct” medical diagnosis.
Overdiagnosis isn’t only an issue when it comes to cancer screening. Other examples include bulges in weak blood vessels (aneurysms) and abnormal-looking spinal discs.