screening

Bowel cancer screening 'does cut deaths', said the BBC News website today, in a report on a study using data from the NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme in England, published in the magnificently named journal Gut. Wow, I thought, that was quick, the programme has been going only since 2006 and didn't cover the whole country till 2010. Have they really found clear evidence of an effect on death rates already?

The UK news media have reported quite extensively a newly published paper by Wald, Simmonds and Morris on screening for cardiovascular disease (CVD) - that is, disease of the heart and blood vessels (principally heart attacks and strokes). The paper concluded that screening should be based on the patient's age alone, and not on other risk factors for CVD. But I'm not going to examine the conclusion - I'm interested in the way the authors dealt with uncertainty.

Screening for disease was in the news again in the UK last week. According to the BBC, a 20-year Swedish study of screening for prostate cancer showed that screening brought no benefit. (The actual study report didn't put it quite so baldly, but effectively did conclude there was no benefit.) This came just a couple of days after the Alzheimer's Disease Society asked that the NHS should offer checks for dementia to everyone (in the UK) when they reach the age of 75. Both these news items reported contrasting views on whether these screening checks are in fact advisable.