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Screening for cancer can cause patients harm as well as save their lives, experts have warned.
Writing in the British Medical Journal, Vinay Prasad, assistant professor at the Oregon Health and Science University, and his colleagues said patients should be told more about the possible risks of screening.
They said screening for things such as prostate and breast cancer can result in people being “overdiagnosed” - where “diseases” that were never going to cause any problem are picked up.
They wrote: “Prostate biopsies are associated with serious harms, including admission to hospital and death.
“Moreover, men diagnosed with prostate cancer are more likely to have a heart attack or commit suicide in the year after diagnosis or to die of complications of treatment for cancers that may never have caused symptoms.”
They added that “the public has an inflated sense of the benefits and discounted sense of the harms of mammography (breast cancer) screening, the cervical smear test, and PSA screening.”
But British experts said there were “clear” benefits to screening for cancer.
Dr Anne Mackie, director of screening at Public Health England, said: “NHS cancer screening and follow-up treatment does prevent or can at least delay some people dying from cancer.
“There is clear and robust evidence of the benefits of bowel cancer screening and falls in deaths from cervical cancer. The independent Marmot review into breast screening concluded that screening reduces breast cancer mortality by 20%.”
And Samia al Qadhi, chief executive of Breast Cancer Care, said screening was still an “effective” way of spotting cancer early.
She said: “Screening does have limitations as well as benefits. It’s estimated for every life saved, three women will have unnecessary, often difficult treatment.
“However, although attending screening does not lower your risk of getting breast cancer, it remains an effective way of detecting breast cancer at an early stage. This may help to increase the likelihood of successful treatment.”
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