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Ultrasound scanners are fairly cheap. But operating them is not easy, you still need training to use them and know what you're looking at. > it's better than n
by gjulianm 5y ago
Ultrasound scanners are fairly cheap. But operating them is not easy, you still need training to use them and know what you're looking at.
> it's better than nothing.
Not necessarily, that's the issue with screening asymptomatic people. You have to balance the consequences and rates of false positives with the benefits of true positives. If ultrasound screening mostly catches indolent diseases, or those where catching them so early doesn't affect outcomes too much; and you have a lot of people going through unnecessary/risky tests, you might end up doing more damage with those screenings. It's not so easy.
- Enginerrrd 5y agoThe potential harm runs deeper than this even. Once a structural abnormality is found, the nocebo effect can come into play and essentially cause symptoms in asymptomatic people, which is a terrible result.
- inglor_cz 5y agoAlso, one thing that is found does not preclude existence of other things to be found. The first discovered problem may attract so much attention that potential others are neglected. Tl;dr: the first diagnosis tends to stick with the patient.
- exporectomy 5y agoI know that can be an issue but like you say, there's a balance and I don't think we know where that balance is for the non-existent AI technology with unknown error rates. Newborn babies undergo a whole lot of simple and inaccurate screenings. I guess those are cases where the harm due to inappropriate treatments is lower than that due to leaving diseases undetected. Either way, I'd rather the technology exist and then people work out how best to use it, rather than the decision being forced on us by it not existing.