Barratt Alexandra L
School of Public Health, University of Sydney, New South Wales.
Aust Fam Physician. 2006 Jan-Feb;35(1-2):39-42.
Screening is a two edged sword, with potential benefits and harms. Despite professional and public enthusiasm for cancer screening there are substantial harms, and increasing evidence that it is not always a good idea to detect cancer early. On the other side, the benefits of cancer screening are quite rare and have been oversold.
This article discusses the potential harms of cancer screening and evidence for the benefits.
Well recognised harms include the psychological and physical harms of false positive and false negative tests. More recent research is uncovering what may turn out to be the biggest downside of cancer screening; the potential to uncover clinically irrelevant disease (pseudo-disease) and therefore harm from unnecessary treatment.
筛查是一把双刃剑，有潜在的益处和危害。尽管专业人士和公众对癌症筛查热情高涨，但仍存在大量危害，且越来越多的证据表明，早期发现癌症并不总是个好主意。另一方面，癌症筛查的益处相当罕见，且被过度宣扬。
本文讨论癌症筛查的潜在危害及益处的证据。
公认的危害包括假阳性和假阴性检测带来的心理和身体伤害。最近的研究正在揭示可能是癌症筛查最大弊端的问题；发现临床无关疾病（假性疾病）的可能性，以及因此产生的不必要治疗带来的危害。
