Screening (medicine)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Screening, in medicine, is a strategy used in a population to detect a disease in individuals without signs or symptoms of that disease. Unlike what generally happens in medicine, screening tests are performed on persons without any clinical sign of disease.
The intention of screening is to identify disease in a community early, thus enabling earlier intervention and management in the hope to reduce mortality and suffering from a disease. Although screening may lead to an earlier diagnosis, not all screening tests have been shown to benefit the person being screened; overdiagnosis, misdiagnosis, and creating a false sense of security are some potential adverse effects of screening. For these reasons, a test used in a screening program, especially for a disease with low incidence, must have good specificity in addition to acceptable sensitivity.
Several types of screening exist: universal screening involves screening of all individuals in a certain category (for example, all children of a certain age). Case finding involves screening a smaller group of people based on the presence of risk factors (for example, because a family member has been diagnosed with a hereditary disease).
See also
- Mobile Health Screening
- Breast cancer screening
- Cancer
- Examinetics - mobile occupational health screening
- False positive
- False negative
- Fetal screening
- General medical examination
- Genetic testing
- Medical test
- Newborn screening
- Pedodontics
- Prostate cancer
- Prostate cancer screening
- Schooliosis
