The story referred to “extra costs women may incur to get childcare and make it to the doctor’s office — plus the costs to a strained healthcare system of ordering more tests.” Not applicable. The story wasn’t about benefits, but rather, the suggested lack of benefit from screening too often. The story did a good job explaining that there can be harm from screening too often – something that often isn’t explained in screening stories: “…any extra screening increases the chance of getting a “false positive” result on a test — meaning the test finds something that doesn’t turn out to be cancer. In that case, women would need more invasive tests to rule out disease, Roland said, and risk “undue harm” from those procedures. “Some of it is, don’t go looking before you need to go looking because you’ll find stuff that you’d rather not find,” said (one observer), who was not involved in the new study. The story did not make clear who was surveyed. Family practitioners? Ob-gyns? There were other issues. The story never fully described the evidence behind the recommendations that “generally call for a three-year wait after normal tests.”  Reuters may have thought that was outside the scope of the current news on the current study, but it would have better informed readers about the quality of the evidence. Then, of course, there’s the confusion over the screening intervals that was addressed in the review summary above. No disease-mongering at play here. An independent expert from the American Society for Clinical Pathology was interviewed – someone not involved in the study. Comparison of screening intervals was at the heart of the story: “There’s really no advantage to annual screening compared to screening every two or three years,” lead author Katherine Roland told Reuters Health. The entire story was about cervical cancer screening being made TOO available too often. The story reminded readers that this type of survey – and its findings – don’t stand alone: “Results from a survey of the same doctors have shown that many also give the HPV test alongside Pap smears to women under 30 — which is not recommended, because HPV is common in young women and often goes away on its own (see Reuters Health story of July 4, 2011. )” It’s clear the story didn’t rely on a news release.
Doctors screen for cervical cancer too often: study