Early cancer diagnosis improves survival rates: of course it does!
If a patient's of cancer diagnosis is made one year earlier, their
survival time from diagnosis will be one year longer regardless of
treatment efficacy. There is only a real increase in survival time if
early intervention (after early diagnosis) significantly increases this.
This argument has been elegantly dissected (1)
1. Gigerenzer G, Gaissmaier W, Kurz-Milcke E, Schwartz LM, Woloshin
S. Helping doctors and patients make sense of health statistics.
Psychological Science in the Public Interest November 2007 vol. 8 no. 2 53
-96
Rapid Response:
Early cancer diagnosis improves survival rates: of course it does!
If a patient's of cancer diagnosis is made one year earlier, their
survival time from diagnosis will be one year longer regardless of
treatment efficacy. There is only a real increase in survival time if
early intervention (after early diagnosis) significantly increases this.
This argument has been elegantly dissected (1)
1. Gigerenzer G, Gaissmaier W, Kurz-Milcke E, Schwartz LM, Woloshin
S. Helping doctors and patients make sense of health statistics.
Psychological Science in the Public Interest November 2007 vol. 8 no. 2 53
-96
Competing interests: No competing interests