مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - The prevention of elderly from overdiagnosis and overtreatment

Abstract :

Overdiagnosis occurs when people without symptoms are diagnosed with a disease that ultimately will not cause them to experience symptoms or early death. Over-treatment is also an issue in relation to the overdiagnosis. Evidence is mounting that medicine is harming healthy people through ever earlier detection and ever wider definition of disease. Screening programmes are detecting early cancers that will never cause symptoms or death. Sensitive diagnostic technologies identify “abnormalities” so tiny they will remain benign, while widening disease definitions mean people at ever lower risks receive permanent medical labels and lifelong treatments that will fail to benefit many of them. More broadly defined, overdiagnosis refers to the related problems of overmedication and subsequent overtreatment, diagnosis creep, shifting thresholds, and disease mongering, all processes helping to reclassify healthy people with mild problems or at low risk as sick. All physicians should evaluate early diagnosis carefully. Overdiagnosis can be either useful or harmful