Is early detection always the best medicine ?

The Recommended Dose, with Alexandra Barratt

Hosted by acclaimed journalist and health researcher Dr Ray Moynihan, The Recommended Dose tackles the big questions in health and explores the insights, evidence and ideas of extraordinary researchers, thinkers, writers and health professionals from around the globe. The series is produced by Cochrane Australia and co-published with the BMJ.

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Dr Ray Moynihan’s guest has led something of a double life, using both medicine and the media to explore and promote the critical role of evidence in healthcare. Now based at the University of Sydney, Alexandra Barratt‘s journey from clinician to journalist to global advocate for evidence based medicine and shared decision-making is a fascinating one.

Here Alexandra talks with Ray about her varied career and the reasons she’s ended up challenging conventional wisdom. She also talks about her research into the pros and cons of breast cancer screening and questions the widely-accepted idea that early detection is always the best medicine.

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Diagnostic tests : how to minimise harm

We must develop new diagnostic tests to tackle real health problems, not to generate them

New diagnostic tests: more harm than good, BMJ 2017;358:j3314,
06 January 2016.

Defenders against overdiagnosis, BMJ 2017;358:j3487, 20 July 2017.

Although new diagnostics may advance the time of diagnoses in selected patients, they will increase the frequency of false alarms, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment in others.

Bjorn Hofmann, professor of medical ethics at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, explains how to minimise harm. Press Play > to listen to the recording.

Key messages

  • Innovative technologies and ample venture capital are combining to produce new disease biomarkers and mobile monitoring devices
  • These new diagnostics are technologically advanced but do not automatically provide improvements in clinical care and population health
  • They have the potential to help some but also to increase the frequency of false alarms, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment in others
  • Excessive testing and false alarms may increase healthcare workload and shift clinicians’ focus towards the healthy
  • Misleading feedback at both the population and individual levels tends to favour further market growth
  • Clinicians must provide a strong counterbalance: educating patients, respecting baseline risk, thinking downstream, and expecting misleading feedback

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