Motives behind CT screening

Nice op-ed from Jerome Kassirer on those who push lung cancer screening with CT scans:

How do we know whether these screening recommendations are motivated by concern for patients’ welfare or money, or perhaps both? We don’t. But widespread screening for lung cancer and heart disease can be risky and will be expensive. Experience shows that every time we approve a screening procedure, it is used more widely than the indications for which it was originally approved. More screening machines invariably lead to more tests; more tests yield more false positive results, more risk to screened patients, and more expense.

Stemming evidence-bereft screening modalities needs to be communicated clearly. The public does not yet understand that more tests does not necessarily mean better medicine.

As Dr. Kassirer puts it: “In medicine, not everything that makes sense is sensible.”