With all the Bayesian experts here, it should be a no-brainer to figure out what to make of the recent study (popular description). It says that, despite doubling early detection rates, late stage cancers declined by barely 8%, so most new early detections are effectively false positives, i.e. they would not develop into a life-threatening condition if left untreated.
Some contradictory quotes:
"We've suggested to women that having a mammogram is one of the most important things you can do for your health, and that's simply not true," Welch says. "I can't tell you the right thing to do, except to tell women the truth, tell them both sides of the story. We shouldn't be scaring women. This is a really close call."
Eric Winer, head of breast medical oncology at Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, notes that the study found an 8% reduction in the number of women whose tumors were detected at more advanced stages. Even under a scenario in which mammograms led more than 1 million women to receive unnecessary treatment, the screenings would have prevented 410,000 diagnoses of late-stage cancer.
Though women have been instructed that "early detection saves lives," relatively few are told that screenings also have costs, including the risk of undergoing surgery, radiation and drug therapy that doesn't help them, Kramer says. "The risks of overdiagnosis are real, and women ought to know about it," Kramer says.
Given the test's limitations, Winer says, women may choose to have fewer screenings to reduce their risk. "It certainly suggests that a woman who chooses to wait until she's 50 to have mammograms, or who chooses to have mammograms every other year, is making a rational decision," Winer says.
“We’re coming to learn that some cancers — many cancers, depending on the organ — weren’t destined to cause death,” said Dr. Barnett Kramer, a National Cancer Institute screening expert. However, “once a woman is diagnosed, it’s hard to say treatment is not necessary.”
“We are left to conclude, as others have, that the good news in breast cancer — decreasing mortality — must largely be the result of improved treatment, not screening,”
“Instead, we’re diagnosing a lot of something else — not cancer” in that early stage, Bleyer said. “And the worst cancer is still going on, just like it always was.”
Another expert, Dr. Linda Vahdat, director of the breast cancer research program at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, said the study’s leaders made many assumptions to reach a conclusion about overdiagnosis that “may or may not be correct.”
“I don’t think it will change how we view screening mammography,” she said.
I have always been very skeptical of the idea of "overdiagnosis". Now, overtreatment is a real problem. And I suppose you could have a problem wherein, once you reveal to a patient that they have a tumor, they're going to want it treated regardless of what the statistics say.
But it sounds to me like the real problem is not patients at all, but doctors who insist on treatment because they don't understand statistics.
"[O]nce a woman is diagnosed, it’s hard to say treatment is not necessary." Well, maybe you need to try harder.
There may be pressure on doctors to overtreat if, in terms of possible litigation, the expected outcome for the doctor of overtreatment is better than the expected outcome for undertreatment.