Cancer screening

Cancer screening is a source of much debate. At the interface between public health, specialist care, economics and public health policy, it creates tensions between professional groups, politicians, the media and the public. A screening test may be cheap, but applying it to a population (with rigorous quality control and effective downstream processing of patients with abnormal results) creates a huge workload and cost. Screening can also have profound psychological effects. People with false-positive results require investigation yet are usually eventually found not to have cancer.