Talking about stopping cancer screening—not so easy : Comment on “older adults and forgoing cancer screening: ‘i think it would be strange’”
A partir d'entretiens semi-dirigés auprès de 33 adultes âgés de 63 à 91 ans, cette étude américaine analyse leurs perceptions vis-à-vis des recommandations gouvernementales suggérant d'arrêter les examens de dépistage du cancer du côlon chez les personnes âgées
As the population ages, increasingly older adults are screened for cancer, including those with short life expectancies. The benefit of cancer screening is finding cancer early before it spreads and requires aggressive therapy and/or leads to loss of life. Because some older adults may not live long enough for a screen-detectable cancer to become clinically significant, the benefits of screening in older adults, particularly those in poor health, are not established. Meanwhile, harms of cancer screening are immediate and include pain and anxiety related to the screening test, complications of the screening test (eg, bowel perforation from colonoscopy) or additional tests after a false-positive result, and overdiagnosis (finding tumors that would never cause symptoms in an older adult's lifetime). Overdiagnosis is particularly concerning because some older adults experience significant complications from cancer treatment. Given potential harms and uncertain benefits, it is important to understand how older adults decide on cancer screening.
JAMA Internal Medicine , commentaire en libre accès, 2012