Tag Archives: screening
Screening For Disease – When Not to Do It
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 3rd November 2011The above is the title of a presentation I gave today at Medical Grand Rounds at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. Below is the PowerPoint file of that presentation. Screening for Disease – When Not to Do It
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Treatment of Prostate Cancer
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 9th May 2011The treatment of prostate cancer has been uncertain for some time. A paper in the May 5th issue of the New England Journal of Medicine examines two approaches to the disease – watchful waiting versus radical prostatectomy. A Scandinavian group observed 695 men with early prostate cancer for 15 years. They conclude that Radical prostatectomy was…
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Screening for Prostate Cancer – Again
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 19th December 2010USA Today which has a hard enough time just reporting the news is now dispensing medical advice: The news that Sen. Ron Wyden has been diagnosed with prostate cancer should be a reminder to men over 50 to be screened for the disease. They don’t seem to have looked to see what the scientific basis for that…
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Screening for Lung Cancer
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 9th November 2010A study of patients at high risk for lung cancer has been announced to the lay press. It showed that screening current and former heavy smokers with low-dose computed tomography (CT-scans) resulted in 20% fewer deaths from the disease compared with a standard chest X-ray. Before you visit your local imaging center after buying a…
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Free Medical Care
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 15th July 2010The federal government has decreed that many medical tests and some types of medical care must be provided by health insurance companies without any co-pays. Among the new “free” services are some which are clearly of no overall health benefit. For example, cholesterol screening (which is specifically mentioned as a test that must be provided…
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Cancer Society Stops Urging Doctors to Offer PSA Test
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 4th March 2010The American Cancer Society has finally joined just about every other organization that makes screening recommendations. It now warns about the limitations of the PSA test for prostate cancer. This subject has been covered repeatedly here so I won’t repeat myself. The problem is that PSA testing yields many false positives and identifies “cancers” that…
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More on Screening for Breast Cancer
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 18th November 2009The United States Preventive Services Task Force last Monday released new guidelines for breast cancer screening. Predictably, the Task Force’s recommendations for less vigorous screening has resulted in a chorus of dissent verging on outrage from a variety of special interest groups. The American Cancer Society says it’s not going to change its recommendations for…
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The Limitations of Cancer Screening
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 1st November 2009A recent article in the JAMA has received a lot of coverage in the lay press. It analyzes screening for breast and prostate cancer. Critics of both screening tests (including me) have, over many years, pointed out the problems inherent in screening for any disease, but most specifically these two. We mostly have been ignored….
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PSA Screening
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 9th October 2009Below is an excerpt from an email sent out a few days ago by the American College of Physicians. It tells doctors that they should discuss the implications of PSA screening before offering the test to their patients. Why they are so far behind the curve is hard to understand. Here’s what I said on…
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Screening for Prostate Cancer – Yet Again
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 20th March 2009It seems to be impossible to drive a stake through the heart of this issue. The current New England Journal of Medicine has two more studies and an editorial on the subject. One (Mortality Results from a Randomized Prostate-Cancer Screening Trial) concludes “that prostate-cancer screening provided no reduction in death rates at 7 years and…
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