ArticleBMJ (Clinical research ed.)2015
People's willingness to accept overdetection in cancer screening: population survey.
Article in BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 51 citations in OpenAlex.
- Patient preferences for breast cancer screening: a systematic review update to inform recommendations by the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care.Systematic reviews · 2024Pooled it
- Selection of patients for large mailed fecal immunochemical test colorectal cancer screening outreach programs: A systematic review.Journal of medical screening · 2021Pooled it
- Systematic review on women's values and preferences concerning breast cancer screening and diagnostic services.Psycho-oncology · 2019Pooled it
- Recommendations on screening for breast cancer in women aged 40-74 years who are not at increased risk for breast cancer.CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne · 2018Guideline
- Values and preferences of men for undergoing prostate-specific antigen screening for prostate cancer: a systematic review.BMJ open · 2018Pooled it
- Trial
- Public (un)willingness to trade-off benefits and harms in decisions about cancer screening: A discrete choice experiment.Journal of medical screening · 2026Article
- Article
- It depends on where you stand on screening: health professionals' awareness, perspectives, and approaches to overdiagnosis in cancer screening - a qualitative interview study.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Screening for Lung Cancer, Overdiagnosis, and Healthcare Utilization: A Nationwide Population-Based Study.Journal of thoracic oncology : official publication of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer · 2025Article
- Article
- Article
- Understanding the Preferences and Considerations of the Public Towards Risk-Stratified Screening for Colorectal Cancer: Insights From Think-Aloud Interviews Based on a Discrete Choice Experiment.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2024Article
- Public Preferences for Determining Eligibility for Screening in Risk-Stratified Cancer Screening Programs: A Discrete Choice Experiment.Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making · 2023Article
- Article
- A community jury study exploring the public acceptability of using risk stratification to determine eligibility for cancer screening.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2022Article
- A Procedure for Eliciting Women's Preferences for Breast Cancer Screening Frequency.Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making · 2022Article
- Preparing African American Men to Make Informed Prostate Cancer Screening Decisions: Development and Pilot Testing of an Interactive Online Decision Aid.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2020Article
- Women's Acceptance of Overdetection in Breast Cancer Screening: Can We Assess Harm-Benefit Tradeoffs?Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making · 2020Article
- Negative plasma Epstein-Barr virus DNA nasopharyngeal carcinoma in an endemic region and its influence on liquid biopsy screening programmes.British journal of cancer · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesTo describe the level of overdetection people would find acceptable in screening for breast, prostate, and bowel cancer and whether acceptability is influenced by the magnitude of the benefit from screening and the cancer specific harms from overdetection.
designOnline survey. Women were presented with scenarios on breast and bowel cancer, men with scenarios on prostate and bowel cancer. For each particular cancer, we presented epidemiological information and described the treatment and its consequences. Secondly, we presented two different scenarios of benefit: one indicating a 10% reduction in cancer specific mortality and the second indicating a 50% reduction.
settingOnline survey of the population in the United Kingdom.
participantsRespondents were part of an existing panel of people who volunteer for online research and were invited by email or online marketing. We recruited 1000 respondents, representative for age and sex for the UK population.
main outcome measuresNumber of cases of overdetection people were willing to accept, ranging from 0-1000 (complete screened population) for each cancer modality and each scenario of benefit.
resultsThere was large variability between respondents in the level of overdetection they would find acceptable, with medians ranging from 113 to 313 cases of overdetection per 1000 people screened. Across all scenarios, 4-7% of respondents indicated they would accept no overdetection at all compared with 7-14% who thought that it would be acceptable for the entire screened population to be overdetected. Acceptability in screening for bowel cancer was significantly lower than for breast and prostate cancer. People aged 50 or over accepted significantly less overdetection, whereas people with higher education levels accepted more; 29% of respondents had heard of overdetection before.
conclusionsAcceptability of overdetection in cancer screening is variable. Invitations for screening should include clear information on the likelihood and consequences of overdetection to allow people to make an informed choice.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.