No screening test for cancer is 100 per cent accurate. While some individuals might benefit from having an early cancer spotted, many more will have abnormalities detected that, although suggestive of a cancer, turn out after further investigations to be completely innocuous. Such false-positives have led to concerns that cancer screening can result in psychological and physical harm to patients.
Nowadays, although routine NHS screening is available for certain cancers such as breast, cervix and bowel, the worry about false positives has been a key argument limiting access to CA125 testing for ovarian cancer and CA19-9 testing for pancreatic cancer.
Lung cancer screening is now advocated for certain groups of patients in the USA.
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