free link to pdf here Perils of overdiagnosis (2)
Dementia screening is not evidence based
Free link to Head to Head debate in BMJ
The Breast screening review is out
New things today 31/10/12 Article in Pulse (free reg needed) Comment is free in the Guardian Here is the press release from the Lancet: Independent panel concludes that breast cancer screening reduces deaths, but overdiagnoses **Embargo: 00:01 [UK time], Tuesday October 30, 2012** An independent panel of experts has concluded that routine breast cancer screening […]
Lifeline screening/ responses
..have posted this response to http://privatehealthscreen.org/, you can see my response on their page and CEMB’s Carl Henegan’s response here, which is not (yet?) up.
Todays’ ‘news’ on breast screening
mammography screening This is the paper attracting the headlines. It would make an ideal paper for students to analyse if they fancied doing it with How to Read a Paper by Trish Greenhalgh. What we really have to ask is in what way this can be more authoritative than the Cochrane review on the subject. It’s not […]
Breast screening: case control vs RCT – the problems
The Daily Telegraph reported yesterday that “Breast cancer screening ‘works and we should move on” – “Women should undergo breast cancer screening because it halves the chance of them dying of the disease, according to a new study that claims to draw a line under the controversy”. So simple? No! Here’s the paper. It’s a […]
Daily Mail screening references
Mail piece here. References include http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa070972 The Great Prostate Mistake. New York Times, March 2010. www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/opinion/10Ablin.html Franks LM, Latent Carcinoma of the Prostate, J Pathol Bacteriol, 68,2,603-606. http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/16/1280.short There are far more references here, many about screening.
Lifeline Screening – the (lack) of the ASA’s effect.
LifelineScreening The Guardian, the Times, the Herald; there are probably more newspapers who have carried full pages adverts for Lifeline Screening over the last few years. This company offers screening tests – that is, tests on people who are completely well. If you have symptoms, the situation is very different. Screening sounds logical – picking […]
Lifeline Screening advert withdrawn. Hurrah. But what will they replace it with….
After almost 11 months the Advertising Standards Authority have decided that Lifeline Screening (you know, the ones that run full page, scaremongering, alarmist, and highly biased adverts in the press encouraging people to have non evidence based screening tests in their church hall for 100 quid upwards) must change their adverts. I was not the […]
A reading list for media doctors who would like to know more about screening.
How to Read a Paper by Trisha Greenhalgh Much is in the BMJ, if you already subscribe. Screening; evidence and practice. Muir Gray and Angela Raffle. Testing Treatments, also from Pinter and Martin, and available freely online here. Overdiagnosed, by Welch, Schwartz and Woloshin. Fooled by Randomness, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The Tyranny of Health, […]