Erring on the side of excess
Better safe than sorry. That’s how we tend to think about health care decisions. But as a guiding principle, it’s often a huge and costly mistake. Here’s an example. While […]
Tag Archives: overdiagnosis
How cancer screening may fail to save lives
It could be that existing studies are simply underpowered to detect the overall benefit. But it’s also possible that the reduction in cancer deaths has been offset by increases in […]
Cancer screening conundrums: Spiral CT imaging
To prevent one death from lung cancer, 320 people need to be screened annually. With that number as a starting point, I came up with this (very rough) calculation of the […]
