[sawert]

I believe they're saying that this type of comprehensive early detection leads to subsequent interventions on issues that would never develop into anything serious where they left alone. by increasing the number of interventions happening you could actually be making the patient worse off

[foogazi]

> early detection leads to subsequent interventions on issues that would never develop into anything serious where they left alone.

Then wouldn’t these be left alone ?

The more research and procedures done the more info gathered on the evidence

[pdonis]

> Then wouldn’t these be left alone ?

The problem is that you don't know which ones would never develop into anything if left alone.

The reason they're left alone now is that you don't know they're there, because you never do any test that shows them being there.

But once you do a test that shows that something is there, it's a lot harder to just leave it alone. Something is there, and you don't know that it's never going to be a problem, so you end up not leaving it alone.

If you were going to leave the thing alone anyway regardless of what the first test showed, there's no point in doing the first test at all.

[ch4s3]

On an individual level, lets assume a polyp in the colon, there's no way to know which may become individually cancerous and which will remain small and benign. The genes are the same, the size and appearance may be the same. You can't know.

At a population level its well established that beyond a certain point you're injuring more people than you are helping by doing the colonoscopies at all. Where to draw that line is where the debate is playing out. The problem is well known, and I'm not aware of ANYONE seriously suggesting that it's possible to eliminate this problem.

[SketchySeaBeast]

If the MRI finds a dozen indicators in your body in a bunch of different locations that might be cancer, all with different likelihoods where would you draw the line on getting them biopsied? Would you be comfortable having heterogeneous masses in your body that have a minor chance of being cancer? Because the MRI is going to say "might be", not "is".

[rawgabbit]

At least in the US, that's not how the healthcare system works. Some blame CYA. Some blame the fact that the system only makes money per procedure. The GP is saying in the US, patients often get procedures that are not worth the risk.

[ch4s3]

No, I'm saying that anywhere in the world you might get an unnecessary procedure. It is impossible to know in many cases if small tumors will become malignant, so judgement calls must be made. Finding more of them inevitably leads to more unnecessary procedures across a population. This is well established in European and American public health literature. This is why screening guidelines exist.

[jstummbillig]

After getting another answer from them further below in this thread, I am under the impression that they are not entirely forthright about what it is they are claiming, or not claiming.