Blood Test That Spots Tumor-Derived DNA in Early-Stage Cancers

Re:Blood Test That Spots Tumor-Derived DNA in Early-Stage Ca... by jonahx on Thursday August 17, 2017 @08:08PM (#15042245)

Understood. But my original question was inspired by greg's claim that early diagnosis of fast-growing cancers typically won't help, because they're so fast. I was asking if it would feasible to do monthly at home blood tests as a way to detect even rapid growth cancers (and assuming that would be enough time).

The point you're making seems orthogonal to me. Unless you're claiming that treatment is never worthwhile for such cancers, no matter how early they're detected, but Greg's original statement seemed to imply otherwise.

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Re:Blood Test That Spots Tumor-Derived DNA in Early-Stage Ca... by lukeschlather on Friday August 18, 2017 @12:32AM (#15043581)

I read Greg's claim (and it's similar to mine) as meaning that there's no test to distinguish between fatal cancers and benign cancers, and this test doesn't claim to be such a test. Even if you have a test that's 100% accurate at detecting cancer, it's only useful if it only detects cancers that are likely to be fatal, otherwise unnecessary treatment will be expensive, both in dollars and in deaths.

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