Blood test that finds 50 types of cancer is accurate enough to be rolled out

Re:Blood test that finds 50 types of cancer is accurate enou... by dabbledash on Friday June 25, 2021 @07:15AM (#27629289)

The idea is that treatment also has risks and false positives are an issue.

If you gave a mammogram to every 20 year old woman, you would end up doing a large number of unnecessary biopsies and you’d find almost no real cancer. In the end, you’d lose more people than you would save.

Or that’s the idea. I’m no expert in this but it makes sense to me conceptually.

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Re:Blood test that finds 50 types of cancer is accurate enou... by JumpCrisscross on Friday June 25, 2021 @11:38AM (#27632141)

> If you gave a mammogram to every 20 year old woman, you would end up doing a large number of unnecessary biopsies and you’d find almost no real cancer

If you gave a mammogram to every 20-year old, you wouldn't do a biopsy when you got a positive. You'd increase monitoring and maybe suggest lifestyle changes. The same way we don't immediately catherize everyone who comes back with high cholesterol.

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Re:Blood test that finds 50 types of cancer is accurate enou... by vidarh on Friday June 25, 2021 @03:59PM (#27635523)

If you gave a mammogram to every 20-year old, you'd cause a significant increase in cancers:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4878445/

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