Cancer Screening Has Provided Significant Value to U.S. Population

TUESDAY, Aug. 22, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Cancer screening has provided significant value to the U.S. population, and improved adherence would add more value, according to a study published online Aug. 7 in BMC Health Services Research.

Tomas J. Philipson, Ph.D., from the University of Chicago, and colleagues built a mathematical model to estimate the aggregate benefits of screenings for breast, colorectal, cervical, and lung cancer over time using U.S. census data. The full potential benefits with perfect adherence and the benefits considering reported adherence were estimated for each screening type.

The researchers found that up to 417 million people were eligible for cancer screening since the initial U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendations. The life-years gained from screenings were estimated to be 15.5 to 21.3 million assuming perfect adherence to recommendations (2.2 to 4.9, 1.4 to 3.6, 11.4 to 12.3, and 0.5 million for breast, colorectal, cervical, and lung cancer, respectively). Combined screening has saved 12.2 to 16.2 million life-years at reported adherence rates since the introduction of the USPSTF recommendations. These benefits represent a value of $8.2 to $11.3 trillion at full potential and $6.5 to $8.6 trillion at current adherence levels. With perfect adherence, single-site screenings could save an additional 3.2 to 5.1 million life-years, representing $1.7 to $2.7 trillion.

"Single-site cancer screenings have offered significant cumulative gains to U.S. life-years gained and improvements to value of screening, despite screening adherence leading to a nontrivial gap between full potential and realized benefit considering adherence," the authors write.

Several authors disclosed ties to Grail LLC, which funded the study.

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