Overdiagnosis in breast cancer screening is an important issue. A recent study from Denmark concluded that one in three breast cancers diagnosed in screening areas in women aged 50-69 years were overdiagnosed. The purpose of this short communication was to disentangle the study's methodology in order to evaluate the soundness of this conclusion. We found that both the use of absolute difference...

Long-term follow-up of randomized trials provide the most accurate estimates of overdiagnosis. Estimates from follow-up of service screening studies are almost as accurate if there is sufficient adjustment for lead time and risk status. When properly analyzed data from both of these types of trials indicate that the rate of overdiagnosis at screening mammography is clinically negligible: 0-5%. ...

We previously documented that, at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI), overdiagnoses (clinical diagnoses uncorroborated at autopsy) comprised a significant proportion of clinical discrepancies. In order to analyze these overdiagnoses and attempt to determine the diseases for which they may have been mistaken, we retrospectively extracted data from consecutive autopsies performed a...

Overdiagnosis (and overtreatment) of cancers not bound to become symptomatic during lifetime is an unavoidable drawback of mammography screening. The magnitude of overdiagnosis has been estimated to be in the range of 5-10%, and thus acceptable in view of screening benefits as to reduced mortality. In a recent research article in BMC Women's Health, Jørgensen, Zahl and Gøtzsche suggest that ove...

M OST OF US LEARNED THAT BRAIN HERniation is about as close to death as a living patient can get. But a clinically important proportion of patients with head computed tomography (CT)-defined herniation are awake and alert (personal communication, Kelli O’Laughlin, MD, MPH, December 1, 2011). Is herniation far less grave than we have always thought? Does this mean that we need to order even more...

claim that our critique of the randomized screening trials has little merit; that there is no reason to believe that the Canadian study was of better quality than the New York Health Insurance Plan (HIP) study or the Two-County study; and that the prior consensus on mammography was correct. However, their review suffers from erroneous assumptions and biased statistical analyses, and their quota...