Everyone has seen the ads: for cancer of the breast, prostate, colon and now thyroid cancer — urging Americans to get a test to see if they have cancer and can get early life-saving treatment.
The new thyroid campaign says: “Don’t forget to check your neck.” However, it’s a rare disease that kills about 1,600 Americans a year, but that many millions now may worry about because of this well-meaning campaign.
The trouble with cancer screening, as previously discussed in this blog about mammograms and prostate cancer PSA screening, is that in completely healthy people who have no symptoms and no special risk factors, screening can turn up far more false alarms and bring about dangerous and unneeded treatment, than the good that is done when a few cancers are caught.
A new article by Natasha Singer in the New York Times makes this point about the new thyroid media campaign, plus a proposal by Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to spend $45 million in federal money on a campaign to teach women under age 40 about how to examine their breasts. Critics of that proposal, including cancer surgeon Susan Love, say there is no benefit in early testing of women in their 20s and 30s for breast cancer. Dr. Love wrote the congresswoman: “Once you have made women more ‘aware’ of their potential risk, you will have nothing to tell them to do!”
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a group of independent experts, recommends routine screening for only a few kinds of cancers, and breast mammograms for women under age 50 are the weakest of their recommendations. According to the article:
for otherwise healthy people with no symptoms,[Dr. Ned Calonge, chairman of the Task Force] said, only a few routine tests have proven to significantly reduce cancer deaths among certain age groups. The task force recommends pap smears for cervical cancer beginning no later than age 21; regular mammograms to screen for breast cancer in women starting at age 40; and tests for colon cancer starting at age 50. And the task force notes that the evidence supporting the breast cancer screening is not as strong as for cervical and colon cancers.
Most other types of screening, meanwhile, have not been proved to reduce the death toll from cancer, said Dr. Kramer at the National Institutes of Health.
“You need a high bar of evidence to start advertising screening to healthy people, most of whom will not benefit,” Dr. Kramer said.
One important caveat: Nobody should ignore symptoms. Once something bothers you or changes or seems unusual, you are no longer in the category of routine screening. Your risk is much higher and you should be checked promptly.
I discuss the reality behind cancer screening numbers in Chapter 8 of my new book on health care, “The Life You Save: Nine Steps to Finding the Best Medical Care — and Avoiding the Worst.” The title of Chapter 8 is: “Should I Be Tested?” Why Understanding the Numbers Is Crucial.
A good book entirely focused on this topic is by Dr. H. Gilbert Welch of Dartmouth, called “Should I Be Tested for Cancer?: Maybe Not and Here’s Why.”