A panel of medical experts called the United States Preventative Services Taskforce concluded in September that screening tests for ovarian cancer do more harm than good. As a result, insurers will not be required by law to pay for those tests.
Very few people argued about this.
Why?
- Ovarian cancer is often rapidly fatal. This results in the lack of a crowd of survivors who will lobby for more aggressive screening. When people live for many years after diagnosis, it is hard to conduct large trials in order to find a survival benefit to screening or early treatment. In case of ovarian cancer, an effective screening test – if it saved lives – would be relatively easy to establish. The lack of a good screening test is not just the result of underpowered clinical trials. There is no true screening test that works, and there aren’t a lot of survivors who are convinced that the screening test saved their lives and who are willing or able to lobby.
- Ovarian cancer screening has never been routine and has no public service announcement to prompt women to get tested. When people are used to getting something, such as a yearly mammogram, they also resist efforts to have it taken away.
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