Prostate Cancer screening: survival vs. mortality

Hi there

In case you missed it – Dr Rob Park has just published an epic review of prostate cancer screening over on the FOAM4GP blog.

If you have any exposure to prostate cancer screening in your practice or just are interested in the way modern medicine works – go over and check it out.  It is a really comprehensive review of where we are at with prostate cancer screening.

I posted a quick interview with Dr Joshua Quaas on the same topic a few years ago (2012).

I have only one thing to add – and it is about how the public perceive prostate cancer screening – their beliefs.  The data is difficult for even the average GP to understand – and it can be distorted by confusing the type of stats used to represent the effects of cancer screening.

So here is a 5 minute Broome Pearl – a rant on one of my pet peeves.  Why Survival data and Mortality data are not the same and should not be used interchangeably.

In fact you could say that the “gap” between Survival and Mortality represents the degree of over diagnosis when it comes to diseases like breast and prostate cancer.

Big thanks to Rob Park for his efforts.

Casey

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