Summary and recommendations:
A surge has occurred in publications about the early detection of diseases and in the proportion of articles discussing its benefits. It is also unbalanced, with twice as many articles mentioning the benefits of early detection as mentioning the harms. The surge seems to result from hype and unwarranted optimism, as mortality rates have not fallen.
In the past five years the ratio of articles discussing only benefits compared to those discussing only harms appears to have stabilised while the number of articles discussing both benefits and harms has increased. Hence, the bias of benefits may be diminishing, as the awareness of harms of early detection is rising. Still only every 76th article on early detection, however, refers to both benefits and harms. Thus, the early detection surge is still big and biased and should be balanced.
We need critical thinking and more studies that specifically target both the benefits and harms of early detection. We need initiatives for systematic monitoring of a wider set of benefits and harms of early detection technologies. We need better critical assessment of early detection strategies in clinical practice, in research funding, and in publication to avoid the persisting bias that early detection is only beneficial.
Excerpts:
..... The opportunity to discover disease in its early development, potentially enabling reductions in morbidity and mortality, has been an incentive for doctors, and, if missed, a source of blame and litigation....
..... Since then, early detection of disease has gained considerable attention worldwide, especially in health checks and screening programmes. Improved diagnostic technology, innovations in biomarkers, 456 new m-health applications, and “P4 medicine” (predictive, preventive, personalised, and participatory) have increased this attention. The number of articles on early detection has increased exponentially since the 1970s, and most of these articles have the same message: early detection is a good thing.....
...... More recently, however, this presumption has been challenged. Several types of early detection have been criticised for being ineffective, futile, or even harmful. The same goes for health checks. The presupposed benefits of early detection can lead to aggressive interventions, the benefits of which are uncertain at best. Early detection can make people ill when it causes “shifts in the perceived severity of the disease, with ripple effects on how people experience and understand their illness and risk of disease.” Thus, the potential harms of early detection have also gained attention.....
....... The results of our study indicate that we are witnessing a rise in papers on early detection that is analogous to a storm surge—the onshore gush of water associated with a low pressure weather system. The severity of surges depends on the shallowness of the water body and the timing of the tides......
...... As with storm surges, we need surveillance and advanced systems for early warning. The imbalance between the number of articles on benefits and harms implies that the advantages of early detection of disease are taken for granted while reflections on harms are lagging behind. Whether the magnitude of the surge is related to the shallowness or bias of our reflection on the implications of early detection or on tides of enthusiasm in diagnostics is open to debate, as the downsides of early detection seem to have been ignored.....
...... The damage of the surge is unknown. We do not fully know the benefits and harms of early detection, in terms of lives saved and avoided suffering, increased health anxiety, more disease (overdiagnosis, medicalisation), and unnecessary and harmful treatment. The increased vigilance against pre-diseases might also change the way we perceive life itself, slowly transforming life into what can be characterised as pre-death. Continued ignorance about its magnitude is no longer an option. Systematic and continuous monitoring is the logical next step, as with other acknowledged side effects of healthcare......
...... Is the early detection surge hype? .....
...... Reductions in mortality for several diseases have not been attributed to early detection. Moreover, the incidence of several diseases that tend to be detected early is increasing with no corresponding reductions in mortality rate. The harms of early detection are extensively reported. Hence, the surge in attention on early detection and the focus on benefits over harms do not seem justified. Even articles that discuss both benefits and harms mention benefits more often in the abstracts. .....
.... Another important point is that we have only noted the number of articles on benefits and harms and not the quality of how harms and benefits are tackled. Studies of cancer screening indicate that harms may be under investigated or under-reported, despite the trials mentioning the word harms as a search term or a free text in titles or abstracts. Quality assessment of the numerous studies we identified is beyond the scope of our study, but our sample analysis indicates that the imbalance between benefits and harms in the literature may be more severe than we report (see supplement 2 in the appendix). This underlines the need for further in-depth analysis of the literature.....
..... We have only discussed early detection in relation to reduced mortality. Clearly, early detection might have other effects, such as reduced morbidity, increased quality of life, or reduced health anxiety. We acknowledge this and encourage further studies.