4 ms·

Also depends a lot on the nature of the screening and what is being screened for. Prostate cancer being somewhat of an outlier as at least to my understanding,

Also depends a lot on the nature of the screening and what is being screened for. Prostate cancer being somewhat of an outlier as at least to my understanding, essentially all men will end up with some kind of tumor or another if they live long enough, but some large fraction of those won't become something that requires medical intervention before the individual would die from any number of other age-related causes. Outside my area of expertise but the relative size of the tissue that produces various breast cancers as well as the proximity to lymph nodes change the calculus on that a bit. But I would definitely expect overall screening protocols to evolve as methodologies are developed that can potentially exclude the false positives from another metholodgy. While test A + A may still produce false positives due the nature of the test failing the same way, if we have A + B + C that are all relatively low-impact and not horribly expensive, that may end up being a fairly good program if some combination of A, B, and C generally exclude the parameters that the other produces a false positive for.

viraptor 5y ago
> as well as the proximity to lymph nodes change the calculus on that a bit. That sounds interesting. Why does lymph node proximity matter?
- avianlyric 5y ago
  Not 100% sure. But I think the proximity means that its easy for the cancer cell to spread to the lymph nodes, then they’ll get fast tracked around the body, spreading cancer everywhere. Once that happens you’re basically dead, all targeted forms of cancer treatment don’t work anymore, because the target area is basically your entire body.
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    You're not "basically dead" -- your odds of surviving 5 years drop from around 80% to 30%.
- reincarnate0x14 5y ago
  Again outside my area of expertise here, but to my understanding one of the significant risks to breast cancer is that if it spreads into the lymphatic tissue, it can subsequently metastasize across the across multiple other organs while compromising the lymphatic immune response that would normally help limit such a spread.
jrapdx3 5y ago
Prevalence of prostate cancer increases with age >70. Of confirmed cases ~2/3 are low grade, require only "active surveillance". Around 20% are intermediate grade tumors and ~10% are high-grade, aggressive cancer. The basic screening tool is the high-specificity PSA lab test, with biopsy considered the definitive diagnostic procedure. Except for the highly malignant variety prostate cancer is generally an "indolent" tumor, that is slow-growing. So in the majority of cases chances are good that the patient would die of something else before the tumor becomes the cause of death. However prostate cancer is a leading cause of cancer death in men. In the US ~30k/yr men die of prostate cancer, so it's not a trivial condition.

viraptor 5y ago

> as well as the proximity to lymph nodes change the calculus on that a bit. That sounds interesting. Why does lymph node proximity matter?

avianlyric 5y ago
Not 100% sure. But I think the proximity means that its easy for the cancer cell to spread to the lymph nodes, then they’ll get fast tracked around the body, spreading cancer everywhere. Once that happens you’re basically dead, all targeted forms of cancer treatment don’t work anymore, because the target area is basically your entire body.
- DarylZero 5y ago
  You're not "basically dead" -- your odds of surviving 5 years drop from around 80% to 30%.
reincarnate0x14 5y ago
Again outside my area of expertise here, but to my understanding one of the significant risks to breast cancer is that if it spreads into the lymphatic tissue, it can subsequently metastasize across the across multiple other organs while compromising the lymphatic immune response that would normally help limit such a spread.

jrapdx3 5y ago

Prevalence of prostate cancer increases with age >70. Of confirmed cases ~2/3 are low grade, require only "active surveillance". Around 20% are intermediate grade tumors and ~10% are high-grade, aggressive cancer. The basic screening tool is the high-specificity PSA lab test, with biopsy considered the definitive diagnostic procedure. Except for the highly malignant variety prostate cancer is generally an "indolent" tumor, that is slow-growing. So in the majority of cases chances are good that the patient would die of something else before the tumor becomes the cause of death. However prostate cancer is a leading cause of cancer death in men. In the US ~30k/yr men die of prostate cancer, so it's not a trivial condition.