Why the Preventive Services Task Force Refuses to Endorse Screening of Lung CA?

Why don’t doctors order every patient in their practice to undergo a a complete CT scan? After all, small cancers might be seen and picked up by the radiologist before they become symptomatic and more difficult to deal with. There is a reason for this, of course. In medical testing, like in any other testing, there are occurrences of false-positive/false-negative results (no disease but positive scan is a false-positive; disease is there but scan is negative is a false-negative). So some patients will not be diagnosed, while others will be wrongly, overly diagnosed. Then there is the money question. To appreciate how clinicians decide to recommend a specific procedure for a population-wide screening, head to the New York Times piece about lung cancer and spiral CT scanning.