Screening, in medicine, is a strategy used to look for as-yet-unrecognised conditions or risk markers. This testing can be applied to individuals or to a whole ...
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population. The people tested may not exhibit any signs or symptoms of a disease, or they might exhibit only one or two symptoms, which by themselves do not indicate a definitive diagnosis.
Screening interventions are designed to identify conditions which could at some future point turn into disease, 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. Additionally, some screening tests can be inappropriately overused. For these reasons, a test used in a screening program, especially for a disease with low incidence, must have good sensitivity in addition to acceptable specificity.
