1489
Breast Cancer (mander.xyz)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] cecinestpasunbot@lemmy.ml 13 points 3 months ago

It’s a common problem in diagnostics and it’s why mammograms aren’t recommended to women under 40.

Let’s say you have 10,000 patients. 10 have cancer or a precancerous lesion. Your test may be able to identify all 10 of those patients. However, if it has a false positive rate of 5% that’s around 500 patients who will now get biopsies and potentially surgery that they don’t actually need. Those follow up procedures carry their own risks and harms for those 500 patients. In total, that harm may outweigh the benefit of an earlier diagnosis in those 10 patients who have cancer.

this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2024
1489 points (98.4% liked)

Science Memes

10923 readers
1981 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS