The American Cancer Society will implement new guidelines for determining cancer screening regulations after a series of controversial decisions by other groups, the organization announced Wednesday.
"We need to more explicitly describe potential harms along with benefits, and when we make recommendations to be clear about the balance between benefits and harms," Dr. Tim Byers of ACS told Reuters Health. "Overdiagnosis is an inherent issue in any screening, even screening that is proven to be beneficial like mammography," he added.
Futures ACS guidelines will be issued by general health care professionals and patient advocates, rather than cancer subspecialists, whom the ACS said may have financial incentives to recommend more tests.
"The conflict is that they know the most about it, but they also have the most self-interest in it," said Byers.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, another recommending organization, has drawn criticism for recommending healthy men not get blood tests for prostate cancer, and that women in their 40s and 50s not get routine mammograms.
Byers said ACS decisions will be transparent as to their reasons. He said some tests, like mammography or colonoscopy, have saved lives, but they have drawbacks, too, such as increased costs, anxiety, and complications resulting from false alarms. He said specialists will still have an advisory role in the recommendations, but will not make decisions or vote.
The guidelines appeared Dec. 14 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
