From tentative beginnings over 70 years ago, screening to detect disease or risk factors before symptoms appear has become a familiar feature of modern healthcare. Screening delivers a mix of health benefits, harms, and costs. Importantly, these outcomes are not constants: they change with new [...]
In this survey study of 2993 men in Australia, higher scores on the Medical Maximizing-Minimizing Scale, indicating stronger preferences for more health care, were associated with reduced relative risk of making an informed choice, having adequate conceptual and correct numerical knowledge of prostate cancer screening [...]
This study sought to estimate rates of screen-detected and interval breast cancers, stratified by risk factor, to inform discussions of risk-stratified population screening. It was a retrospective population-based cohort study using analysis of routinely collected BreastScreen WA program clinical and administrative data. Read More
Current guidelines recommend that patients attending general practice should be screened for excess weight, and provided with weight management advice. This study sought to elicit the views of people with overweight and obesity about the role of GPs in initiating conversations about weight management. Read [...]
In December 2017, the Australian National Cervical Screening Program (NCSP) changed from 2-yearly cervical cytology to 5-yearly primary human papillomavirus (HPV) testing, starting at age 25 and with an exit test when aged 70–74. Women showed limited awareness of these changes prior to their implementation. [...]
We agree with other analyses of the UK Age trial on the effect on breast cancer mortality of mammographic screening from age 40 years, including observations on the small absolute risk of dying from breast cancer for women aged between 40 and 50 years, and [...]
We read with interest Gordon and Yaffe’s letter about our article, “Women’s Acceptance of Overdetection in Breast Cancer Screening: Can We Assess Harm-Benefit Tradeoffs?” We agree with them on some points but disagree on several others.
Australia is one of the first high-income countries to implement primary human papillomavirus (HPV)-based screening, ahead of the USA, UK, Canada and New Zealand. Primary HPV testing has recently become one of the recommended options for cervical screening in the USA, but patients may need [...]
This study aimed to evaluate Australian web-based resources that provide information about the changes to the cervical screening program.
This paper set out to assess different strategies for communicating to older adults about stopping cancer screening. We found that older adults may reduce their screening intention without reporting increased cancer anxiety when clinicians use a more confronting strategy communicating they may not live long [...]