| I think this is a very misleading way of looking at it. For example the US Preventative Task Force evaluates evidence and recommends screening guidelines as well as giving the strength of the evidence. For breast cancer, the only recommended screening is that women age 50 to 74 have mammograms every 2 years. And that is B grade evidence. https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recomme... With screenings, you have to be really careful about selection bias. Basically, screening will catch a larger proportion of slow growing cancer. Also with respect to staging, the slower growing a cancer, the earlier the stage you will catch it at. My guess would be that if you have a cancer that is rapidly going from stage 1 to stage 2, you would already have a worse outcome and the 2 months screening hiatus is not going to be that big a difference maker. EDIT: In case people ask about clinical breast exams and self breast exams, here are the American Cancer Society guidelines: "Research has not shown a clear benefit of regular physical breast exams done by either a health professional (clinical breast exams) or by women themselves (breast self-exams)." https://www.cancer.org/cancer/breast-cancer/screening-tests-... So the only guidelines with evidence backing them up call for 2 year screenings. Within that framework, a 2 month delays are not going to be very clinically significant. |