ArticleStatistical methods in medical research2019
Estimating the frequency of indolent breast cancer in screening trials.
Article in Statistical methods in medical research, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Quantifying the duration of the preclinical detectable phase in cancer screening: a systematic review.Epidemiology and health · 2022Pooled it
- A Comparison of Methods for Modeling Multistate Cancer Progression Using Screening Data with Censoring after Intervention.Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making · 2026Article
- Modeling the Impact of Multicancer Early Detection Tests: A Review of Natural History of Disease Models.Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making · 2025Review
- Quantifying Overdiagnosis for Multicancer Detection Tests: A Novel Method.Statistics in medicine · 2024Article
- Article
- A progressive three-state model to estimate time to cancer: a likelihood-based approach.BMC medical research methodology · 2022Article
- The future of early cancer detection.Nature medicine · 2022Review
- The Contrasting Seasonality Patterns of Some Cancer-Types and Herpes Zoster Can Be Explained by a Binary Classification of Immunological Reactions.Journal of inflammation research · 2022Article
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.
Funding
Abstract
Cancer screening can detect cancer that would not have been detected in a patient's lifetime without screening. Standard methods for analyzing screening data do not explicitly account for the possibility that a fraction of tumors may remain latent indefinitely. We extend these methods by representing cancers as a mixture of those that progress to symptoms (progressive) and those that remain latent (indolent). Given sensitivity of the screening test, we derive likelihood expressions to simultaneously estimate (1) the rate of onset of preclinical cancer, (2) the average preclinical duration of progressive cancers, and (3) the fraction of preclinical cancers that are indolent. Simulations demonstrate satisfactory performance of the estimation approach to identify model parameters subject to precise specifications of input parameters and adequate numbers of interval cancers. In application to four breast cancer screening trials, the estimated indolent fraction among preclinical cancers varies between 2% and 35% when assuming 80% test sensitivity and varying specifications for the earliest time that participants could plausibly have developed cancer. We conclude that standard methods for analyzing screening data can be extended to allow some indolent cancers, but accurate estimation depends on correctly specifying key inputs that may be difficult to determine precisely in practice.
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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.