Evaluate Health Screenings Before Undergoing Your Next Test

Recently, during her annual "well woman" exam, Mary, a healthy 50-year-old schoolteacher, asked me about screening her for ovarian cancer.

Tragically, one of Mary's friends recently died from ovarian cancer. Mary has no risk factors for ovarian cancer and no family history of ovarian or other cancers. I explained to Mary that unfortunately, there are no reliable screening tools to diagnose ovarian cancer.

We went on to have a discussion about screening and the characteristics of reliable medical screening tests. The purpose of screening is to identify an unrecognized disease or condition in well persons, without symptoms. Screening tests should be applied to those conditions that meet the following criteria:

1. Acceptable methods of treatment must be available.

2. The disease or condition must have a significant effect on the quality of life and life expectancy.

3. The disease must have a period during which there are no symptoms, when detection and treatment will significantly reduce illness and/or death. Furthermore, treatment in this asymptomatic phase must yield a therapeutic result superior to that obtained by delaying treatment until symptoms appear.

4. The incidence, or the number of new cases identified, must be significant to justify the cost of screening to a population of people.

5. The screening tests must be simple to perform, simple to interpret and relatively comfortable to people.

6. The tests must be available at a reasonable cost. This not only applies to the monetary cost of performing the tests, but also the evaluation of false positive tests, the psychological impact on a person of a false-positive test, and consideration of the medical risk incurred in performing the test as well as further testing required in the workup of a positive test.

Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of gynecologic cancer deaths in the United States. Approximately 22,000 cases of ovarian cancer are diagnosed annually in the United States, with 14,000 deaths each year.

If diagnosed in an earlier stage, the five-year survival rate, or the percentage of people alive five years after diagnosis, can be as high as 90 percent. The five-year survival rate drops to 25 percent if diagnosis is made in a later stage.

The goal of screening would, therefore, be to diagnose ovarian cancer in its earlier stages, when treatment would have a beneficial effect on outcomes.

Several tests have been used to screen for ovarian cancer. But three large studies failed to show that screening resulted in earlier diagnosis of ovarian cancer. So, although there is evidence to show that diagnosing ovarian cancer at its earlier asymptomatic stages leads to better survival, there have been no tests shown to detect ovarian cancer in these earlier stages.

Furthermore, positive tests for ovarian cancer generally lead to surgical procedures. One study revealed that 15 percent of women undergoing a surgical procedure for a false-positive screen experienced a serious complication related to the surgery.

I explained to Mary that not only was there no evidence that screening led to better outcomes, but that with the tests currently available to diagnose ovarian cancer, screening would lead to significantly more potential harm than good.

In contrast, colorectal cancer is a condition that meets the aforementioned screening criteria.

Most colorectal cancers develop slowly over several years; before a cancer develops, a growth of tissue or tumor usually begins as a non-cancerous polyp on the inner lining of the colon or rectum. A polyp is a benign, non-cancerous tumor. Some polyps can progress into a cancer but not all do. There are generally no symptoms associated with polyps.

When a precancerous polyp is identified by a screening test, progression to cancer is prevented, and there is no effect on health or life expectancy.

However, when colorectal cancer is diagnosed after symptoms develop, the five-year survival rate can range from 6 percent to 74 percent, depending on the stage of the cancer at the time of diagnosis.

Colon cancer affects a significant number of people, there are acceptable screening methods and treatments, and identifying and treating precancerous or early stage cancer in the asymptomatic period leads to better outcomes. Because it meets screening criteria and the incidence of colorectal cancer starts to increase at age 50, I recommended Mary get screened.

In addition to screening for colorectal cancer, I also advised Mary be screened for breast cancer with an annual mammogram, and cervical cancer with a Pap smear and HPV, or human papillomatous virus, test every five years. We reviewed warning signs of skin cancer. I also counseled Mary to have a blood test to check a lipid profile, and a fasting blood sugar test as a screen for diabetes.

Screening recommendations vary depending on stage in life cycle, and individuals should discuss the appropriate screening tests with their doctor.

For a complete list of "health maintenance" guidelines, please visit clevelandclinic.org/health.

Michael Rabovsky, MD, is Interim Chairman of the Department of Family Medicine in the Medicine Institute at Cleveland Clinic and Medical Director of the Cleveland Clinic Beachwood Family Health and Surgery Center. His specialty interests include healthcare screening, preventive medicine and general family medicine. He attended medical school at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Md., and he completed his residency at University Hospitals of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio.