Screening for aortic aneurysm

doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7383.284

BMJ 2003;326:284 ( 1 February )

Letters

Screening for aortic aneurysm

Human cost should not be dismissed

National screening programme is long overdue

Human cost should not be dismissed

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ Greenhalgh and Powell's editorial assesses the economic evaluation of the multicentre aneurysm screening study (MASS),but it masks with numbers a human tragedy at the core of the story:this is a screening study that killed people. ¹ ²

The authors mention in passing a mortality of 6% among the 322 men who had surgery as a result of the invitation to screening.This figure represents 19 men, comparatively young at retirementage, who before receiving the invitation would have been livingtheir lives unfettered by the knowledge that they had an aneurysm.Now they aredead.

Obviously some of these men might have died anyway from a sudden rupture, but a clear distinction needs to be made betweendying naturally and at the instigation of doctors. It could beconsidered ethically acceptable if the study showed a convincingoverall survival benefit in the screened population, but the allcause mortality at . . . [Full text of this article]