to screen or not to screen? ethical reflections on the current controversy about mammography screening

Universal neonatal hearing screening: to screen or not to screen.

Universal neonatal hearing screening has been a long time coming. The goals of neonatal screening are to accurately identify babies with hearing loss, and to rehabilitate those identified as early as possible. Behavioural screening of neonates is not accurate enough. The Crib-o-gram records a neonate’s response and movements to sound as he or she lies quietly in the crib. Unfortunately, the fal...

To screen or not to screen.

All screenings lack efficiency because they rely too often on biaised and underpowered statistics. Healthcare business makes tremendous benefits out of well established and easy profit earning processes from screenings to treatments; therefore patients enlightened consent is under influence. In the wealthiest parts of the world, this field of public health sciences impulses studies with intense...

Depression: to screen or not to screen?

There are few more difficult diagnoses to make than depression in sick older patients in a general hospital. There is no diagnostic test and confounding physical symptoms, the sheer fact of being ill in the inhospitable and frightening environment of a hospital away from home, possibly for weeks, and still facing an uncertain recovery makes interpretation of symptoms very difficult. When does a...

To screen or not to screen: the prostate cancer dilemma

The European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate (ERSPC) has updated their previous seminal report on prostate cancer mortality comparing screened men to controls. Now with 13 years follow-up, the rate ratio of prostate cancer mortality was 0.79 favoring the screened population. The authors concluded that there was a "substantial reduction in prostate cancer mortality attributable to tes...

Colorectal cancer: to screen or not to screen?

Gestational Diabetes Mellitus: To Screen or Not to Screen?

D iscussion about gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is slowly creating traction on the best way forward. Recent evidence has confirmed that there is a continuum of risk for adverse maternal and fetal outcomes as the maternal glucose level rises (1,2). There is an increasing number of studies supporting the importance of fuel-mediated teratogenesis, including epigenetic influences, that are le...