Search Results for ""lung cancer screening""
Scores on Eight Lung Cancer Screening Stories
In the last Publisher’s Note, I wrote about our reviews of six stories by six different news organizations on a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine about CAT scan screening for lung cancer in smokers. After that Note was published, we posted two more reviews of other stories on that study. U.S. […]
Study finds lung cancer screenings could save lives
A new study recommends the best kind of early warning for lung cancer.
Study finds lung cancer screenings could save lives
‘Love your lungs’? Exaggerated screening claims seem more out of step than ever
A video on the website of Wisconsin-based Gundersen Health System makes an emotional pitch for lung cancer screening. We see a woman blowing soap bubbles with a child. A jogger exhaling after a winter run. A multi-generational family cheering at something on TV. An older woman blowing out candles on a birthday cake. “Your lungs […]
A machine-versus-doctors fixation masks important questions about artificial intelligence
Next time you go to the doctor, remember to bring your genome card. What, you don’t have one? Of course you don’t. Wallet-sized cards containing a person’s genetic code don’t exist. Yet they were envisioned in a 1996 Los Angeles Times article, which predicted that by 2020 the makeup of a person’s genome would drive […]
Screening: How overdiagnosis and other harms can undermine the benefits
“Screening saves lives.” We’ve all seen that seductive message. The idea behind screening — catching disease early when it’s easiest to treat — sounds good, but it can be misleading. Screening means testing people who don’t have signs or symptoms of the disease. It might save some people from a fate such as dying of […]
5-Star Friday: Give us more!
It’s not hard to fathom why many people think more medicine is better; after all, the word “healthcare” is made up of two principles we typically value and want more of. But we’ve gotten to a point where the medicalization of our lives — and the mega-profits and harms that come with it — are […]
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Too Much Medicine: A small medical conference with a big impact
The Too Much Medicine (TMM) conference is small, but has a potentially huge impact. We cover plenty of medical conferences about heart disease, cancer, and dementia (to name a few) that trigger tsunamis of media coverage because they –quite obviously and understandably — affect millions of people and involve grave outcomes. But the TMM conference, wrapping […]
Questions about a ‘simple blood test’ to screen for cancer prompt revealing answer: It’s complicated
We often tell our readers to run for the hills whenever they see a news story touting a “simple blood test.” You won’t find a better example of why you need to be wary than an exchange between a reporter and a researcher at a news conference at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual […]
A hyped news release gets revised at ASCO: Did it lead to improved coverage from journalists?
We often write about the problems arising from hyped news releases coming out of medical conferences. But I don’t think we’ve ever written about an over-the-top news release getting toned down — and re-released — with more cautious language. Kudos to the media team at the annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology […]
Are the clinical trial results for breast cancer drug taselisib ‘incredibly exciting’ or ‘disappointing’?
The recent publicity around Roche’s drug taselisib is a bit like a choose-your-own-adventure book: Depending on what news release or news article you read, you’d likely have very different conclusions about the drug’s performance in a recent clinical trial. Presented at ASCO18, the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the phase 3 […]
As world’s largest cancer conference gets underway, keep these three tweets in mind
This weekend members of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) will hold their annual meeting in Chicago. It’s one of the largest scientific conferences in the world, with thousands of studies being presented on new ways to prevent, detect and treat cancer. But those presentations are often very limited in the time provided and […]
ASCO 2018: How a major medical meeting uses embargoes to shape the news, and what the consequences may be
Later today the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) will hold a virtual “presscast” giving journalists a sneak preview into a handful of “new, high-impact studies” that will be presented at their annual meeting two weeks from now. Just six out of 2,500 abstracts were selected for the preview. “Many medical meetings do this and I’ll […]
Could finding more cancer lead us to understand risk factors less?
An opinion piece in last week’s Annals of Internal Medicine argues that just how aggressively we screen for some cancers can actually distort our understanding of the risk factors for a particular cancer, as well as how common we perceive it to be. The authors describe ‘scrutiny-dependent’ cancers — those subtypes of cancers often picked […]
NBC News doesn’t back away from shortcomings of new blood test for early cancer detection
It outlines some of the potential risks as well as the benefits of the proposed test, and adequately explains that it is not yet ready for prime time.
Blood Test Finds Cancer Before Symptoms Start
Lung cancer test based on “a simple blood draw”? There’s no such thing
The release employs mostly cautious language but it comes up short in filling readers in on costs, benefits and quality of evidence.
