Claim: The test that reveals cancer sooner
Verdict: REFUTES

Retrieved passages:
title: Length time bias
text: shorter asymptomatic phase than slower-growing tumors. Thus, there is a shorter period of time during which the cancer is present in the body (and so might be detected by screening) but not yet large enough to cause symptoms, that would cause the patient to seek medical care and be diagnosed without screening. As a result, if the same number of slow-growing and fast-growing tumors appear in a year, the screening test detects more slow-growers than fast-growers. If the slow growing tumors are less likely to be fatal than the fast growers, the people whose cancer is detected by screening do

title: Ovarian cancer
text: screening test, meaning most cases are not diagnosed until they have reached advanced stages. Ovarian cancer metastasizes early in its development, often before it has been diagnosed. High-grade tumors metastasize more readily than low-grade tumors. Typically, tumor cells begin to metastasize by growing in the peritoneal cavity. More than 60% of women presenting with ovarian cancer have stage-III or stage-IV cancer, when it has already spread beyond the ovaries. Ovarian cancers shed cells into the naturally occurring fluid within the abdominal cavity. These cells can then implant on other abdominal (peritoneal) structures, including the uterus, urinary bladder, bowel, lining of

title: Ovarian cancer
text: inguinal lymph nodes may reveal lymphadenopathy, which can be indicative of metastasis. Another indicator may be the presence of a pleural effusion, which can be noted on auscultation. When an ovarian malignancy is included in a list of diagnostic possibilities, a limited number of laboratory tests are indicated. A complete blood count and serum electrolyte test is usually obtained; when an ovarian cancer is present, these tests often show a high number of platelets (20–25% of people) and low blood sodium levels due to chemical signals secreted by the tumor. A positive test for inhibin A and inhibin B can

title: Ray Thomas
text: I decided it was time I spoke out. A cancer diagnosis can shake your world and your family's but if caught in time it can be cured or held in remission. I urge all males to get tested NOW. Don't put it off by thinking it won't happen to me. It needs to be caught early. It's only a blood test – a few minutes out your day to save yourself from this disease. Love and God Bless, Ray. In later years Thomas resumed flute playing with other musicians, one instance of which was for the song "L´urlo nelle ossa",

title: Overdiagnosis
text: only accessible to be detected for a short period of time) – the very cancers we would most like to catch. For more information, see Screening (medicine)#Length time bias. This long-standing model has a hidden assumption: namely, that all cancers inevitably progress. But some pre-clinical cancers will not progress to cause problems for patients. And if screening (or testing for some other reason) detects these cancers, overdiagnosis has occurred. The figure below depicts the heterogeneity of cancer progression using 4 arrows to represent 4 categories of cancer progression. The arrow labeled "Fast" represents a fast-growing cancer, one that quickly leads

title: Cancer research
text: usually more difficult to treat in later stages. Accurate detection of cancer is also important because false positives can cause harm from unnecessary medical procedures. Some screening protocols are currently not accurate (such as prostate-specific antigen testing). Others such as a colonoscopy or mammogram are unpleasant and as a result some patients may opt out. Active research is underway to address all these problems. One approach is blood screening for a wide variety of tumor markers. Research published in "Cell" suggests future cancer diagnostics to be accomplished at an early stage with a single drop of blood. Emerging topics of

title: Molecular diagnostics
text: for lifetime risk of breast cancer. Also, some cancers are not always employed with clear symptoms. It is useful to analyze people when they do not show obvious symptoms and thus can detect cancer at early stages. For example, the ColoGuard test may be used to screen people over 55 years old for colorectal cancer. Cancer is a longtime-scale disease with various progression steps, molecular diagnostics tools can be used for prognosis of cancer progression. For example, the OncoType Dx test by Genomic Health can estimate risk of breast cancer. Their technology can inform patients to seek chemotherapy when necessary

title: Georgios Papanikolaou
text: and stained, it could be determined if cancer cells were present. This was the first screening test to diagnose cervical and uterine cancer. Babeş presented his findings to the Romanian Society of Gynaecology in Bucharest on 23 January 1927. His method of cancer diagnosis was published in a French medical journal, Presse Médicale, on 11 April 1928, but it is unlikely that Papanicolaou was aware of it. Moreover, the two techniques are different in their design. Therefore, although Babes publication preceded Papanicolaou, the design of the Pap test belongs to Papanicolaou since he had already tried it in 1925 in

title: Screening (medicine)
text: slower-growing tumors have better prognoses than tumors with high growth rates. Screening is more likely to detect slower-growing tumors (due to longer pre-clinical sojourn time), which may be less deadly. Thus screening may tend to detect cancers that would not have killed the patient or even been detected prior to death from other causes. Not everyone will partake in a screening program. There are factors that differ between those willing to get tested and those who are not. If people with a higher risk of a disease are more likely to be screened, for instance women with a family history

title: Overdiagnosis
text: ordinarily expected lifetime. Cancer screening is the effort to detect cancer early, during its pre-clinical phase — the time period that begins with an abnormal cell and ends when the patient notices symptoms from the cancer. It has long been known that some people have cancers with short pre-clinical phases (fast-growing, aggressive cancers), while others have cancers with long pre-clinical phases (slow-growing cancers). And this heterogeneity has an unfortunate implication: namely, screening tends to disproportionately detect slow-growing cancers (because they are accessible to be detected for a long period of time) and disproportionately miss the fast-growing cancers (because they are

title: Cancer prevention
text: sugar molecules attached made by their tumors, suggesting that antitumor antibodies in the blood may be a source of sensitive biomarkers for cancer detection 2010 - Initial Results of the Lung Cancer Screening Trial (NLST) Released. Initial results show that screening with low-dose helical computerized tomography (CT) reduced lung cancer deaths by about 20% among current and former heavy smokers 2011 - Lung Results from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial Released 2011 - Ovarian Results from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial Released. PLCO results show that screening for ovarian cancer

title: Breast cancer chemotherapy
text: a worse outcome for patients, but also that its presence is a highly significant indicator that the tumor will respond to anthracyclines. CEP17 is detected by a common and straightforward test (fluorescent in situ hybridisation or FISH), which is carried out routinely in breast cancer patients; it is used to test for the HER2 gene to see whether the women might benefit from the drug Herceptin. Professor Bartlett said that assessment for CEP17 could be easily carried out in the same FISH analysis as for HER2. [http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/183619.php <nowiki>[1]</nowiki>] For breast cancer, chemotherapy drugs are given into a vein (intravenously) or

title: Breast cancer screening
text: fair evidence of benefit. About 2% of American women have family histories that indicate an increased risk of having a medically significant BRCA mutation. TBIA (Total Biochemistry Infra-red Analysis) is a new technology for breast cancer screening based on the immune system's respond to the tumor. It is a blood test that can detect cancer at early stages as well as distinguish benign from malignant tumors. the test is based on the fact that cells from the immune system that pass through a tumor change and can be found everywhere in the body and identified in early stages of cancer.

title: Cancer
text: prefer a slower, less candid approach to disclosure than is idealized in the United States and Western Europe, and they believe that sometimes it would be preferable not to be told about a cancer diagnosis. In general, disclosure of the diagnosis is more common than it was in the 20th century, but full disclosure of the prognosis is not offered to many patients around the world. In the United States and some other cultures, cancer is regarded as a disease that must be "fought" to end the "civil insurrection"; a War on Cancer was declared in the US. Military metaphors

title: BRCA mutation
text: scintimammography, elastography, thermography, ductal lavage, and experimental screening protocols, some of which hope to identify biomarkers for breast cancer (molecules that appear in the blood when breast cancer begins). Ovarian cancer screening usually involves ultrasonography of the pelvic region, typically twice a year. Women may also use a blood test for CA-125 and clinical pelvic exams. The blood test has relatively poor sensitivity and specificity for ovarian cancer. In both breast and ovarian screening, areas of tissue that look suspicious are investigated with either more imaging, possibly using a different type of imaging or after a delay, or with biopsies

title: Mantle cell lymphoma
text: metabolized at a rapid rate. Faster-than-average metabolism indicates that cancer is likely present. Metabolism of radioactive glucose may give a false positive, particularly if the patient has exercised before the test. PET scans are much more effective when the information from them is integrated with that from a CT scan to show more precisely where the cancer activity is located and to more accurately measure the size of tumors. There are no proven standards of treatment for MCL, and there is no consensus among specialists on how to treat it optimally. Many regimens are available and often get good response

title: EN2 (gene)
text: reliable than current methods that use prostate-specific antigen (PSA). If effective, a urine test is considered easier and less embarrassing for the patient than blood tests or rectal examinations and, therefore, less likely to discourage early diagnosis. At the time of the report, it was not clear whether or not the EN2 test could distinguish between aggressive tumours that would require intervention and relatively benign ones that would not. The EN2 test for prostate cancer has been licensed to Zeus Scientific, as they reported in March 2013. In that announcement they said they expected the test to be submitted to

title: Cancer prevention
text: with transvaginal ultrasound (TVU) and the CA-125 blood test did not result in fewer deaths from the disease compared with usual care 2012 - Colorectal Results from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial Released. Results confirm that screening people 55 years of age and older for colorectal cancer using flexible sigmoidoscopy reduces colorectal cancer incidence and mortality 2013 - NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) Approved for Start, opening the way for the program to bring state-of-the art cancer prevention, control, treatment and imaging clinical trials, cancer care delivery research, and disparities studies to individuals in

title: Lung cancer screening
text: day from 1971 to 1986 and compared intensive CXR and sputum screening every three times per year compared to less frequent annual screening. The results showed that more frequent screening resulted in higher resectability rate (more early-stage detection), but made no difference in mortality from lung cancer. CXR screening were found to detect 6 times as many new cancers as sputum tests. In 1996 results were published of a study of around 6,800 subjects screened in Japan; 67% to 73% of CT-detected lung cancers were missed by chest x-ray, the same test used in the comparison group of some randomized

title: Breast cancer screening
text: women over 50 without dense breasts, breast cancers detected by screening mammography are usually smaller and less aggressive than those detected by patients or doctors as a breast lump. This is because the most aggressive breast cancers are found in dense breast tissue, which mammograms perform poorly on. The presumption was that by detecting cancer in an earlier stage, women will be more likely to be cured by treatment. This assertion, however, has been challenged by recent reviews which have found the significance of these net benefits to be lacking for women at average risk of dying from breast cancer.