Cancer screening benefits are overstated, experts claim

Cancer screening may not save lives, researchers say in the British Medical Journal, but others say UK screening programmes have cut the number of deaths

The benefits of cancer screening have been overstated and the practice may not even save lives, experts in the US and Germany have claimed.

While there may be fewer deaths from the specific cancer for which screening takes place, little account is taken of the harm some patients suffer psychologically and medically because of overdiagnosis and complications from treatment, an article and editorial in the BMJ medical journal suggest.