Reply to two other student posts with a reflection of their response. Please make sure to provide citations and references (in APA, 7th ed. format) for your work. (300 words minimum)
Text#1:
by Irina Garcia Leon –
Advantages and Disadvantages of Screening
The screening process plays a crucial role in disease prevention and the implementation of precautionary measures to mitigate the risk of infection (Boardman et al., 2020). Patients who receive positive test results are referred for further diagnostic testing or treatment to confirm the diagnosis. These tests do not diagnose illnesses, but they do cause positive tests to be run again to confirm the diagnosis. Many strategies exist for disease prevention.
Primary prevention prevents disease, secondary prevention discovers disease early, frequently through screening, and tertiary prevention reduces disease transmission. The effectiveness of a screening test is determined by its sensitivity, specificity, and predictive values. The chance of positive test results in an infected group is defined as sensitivity. Specificity refers to the likelihood of negative test results in uninfected people. Lastly, predictive values encompass the overall likelihood of obtaining accurate results from a screening test. Sensitivity pertains to the likelihood of potential positive outcomes resulting from a specific test conducted on a cohort of individuals who are infected.
Advantages of Screening
Medical screening and diagnostic tests play a crucial role in preventive healthcare, since they offer numerous advantages to both patients and the healthcare system at large (Stein et al., 2021). Primarily, these tests facilitate the identification and assessment of health issues in their initial stages, hence enabling timely intervention and treatment. The timely identification of diseases typically leads to more effective and minimally intrusive treatment approaches. This intervention enhances overall outcomes while mitigating the burden on the healthcare system. In addition, regular testing can provide insights into risk factors and predispositions, enabling individuals to make informed decisions regarding their lifestyle and mitigate the likelihood of developing specific diseases.
In addition, medical tests play a vital role in providing essential data that healthcare practitioners can employ to adjust patients' healthcare protocols, so enhancing the overall quality of patient care. Precise and comprehensive testing can provide healthcare professionals with vital data pertaining to customizing treatment approaches, ascertaining appropriate medication dosages, and predicting the progression of illnesses. The implementation of a tailored approach enhances the effectiveness of healthcare provision while concurrently mitigating the potential for adverse effects.
Moreover, the identification of potential health issues in their early stages through medical screenings might contribute to the mitigation of long-term healthcare costs. The rationale behind this is that the cost of preventative therapy is typically lower compared to the more intensive therapies required for advanced stages of diseases. Medical screening and tests play a crucial role in empowering individuals to assume responsibility for their own health and facilitating healthcare providers in delivering care that is customized, streamlined, and economically advantageous.
Disadvantages of Screening
Despite the fact that medical screening and tests can provide insightful information about an individual's health, they are not without potential drawbacks (Amann et al., 2020). The possibility of obtaining false positive or false negative results, which can cause unwarranted anxiety or provide a false sense of security, is one of the most significant disadvantages. False positives can lead to additional invasive tests and therapies that pose risks and emotional duress, whereas false negatives can delay diagnosis and treatment, putting the individual's health at risk. In addition, an excessive reliance on tests can sometimes cloud professional discernment and impede a comprehensive evaluation of a patient's general health, which can lead to the potential omission of significant factors that influence an individual's state of health.
In addition, examinations and tests for medical conditions can be quite expensive, especially for those without adequate health insurance. Some individuals may be dissuaded from procuring necessary medical care due to the high cost of these tests, which can result in a delay in diagnosis and subsequent complications.
The improper or excessive use of medical tests can place a strain on healthcare resources, causing healthcare systems to become overburdened and delaying testing for individuals with an urgent need for the results. In order to ensure that individuals receive appropriate medical care without incurring unnecessary emotional or financial costs, it is essential to establish a balance between utilizing medical screenings effectively and taking into account their potential disadvantages.
References
Amann, J., Blasimme, A., Vayena, E., Frey, D., & Madai, V. I. (2020). Explainability for artificial intelligence in healthcare: A multidisciplinary perspective. BMC medical informatics and decision making, 20(1), 1-9.
Boardman, F. K., Clark, C., Jungkurth, E., & Young, P. J. (2020). Social and cultural influences on genetic screening programme acceptability: A mixed‐methods study of the views of adults, carriers, and family members living with thalassemia in the UK. Journal of Genetic Counseling, 29(6), 1026-1040.
Stein, J. D., Khawaja, A. P., & Weizer, J. S. (2021). Glaucoma in adults—screening, diagnosis, and management: a review. Jama, 325(2), 164-174.
Text #2
Screening Discussion. Advantages and Disadvantages of Screening:
Screening refers to any diagnostic test that is done to diagnose a disease in time. That is why there are standards for when it is necessary to perform a diagnostic examination and with a certain frequency. Groups of doctors have created guidelines to follow to perform these tests in these ranges and for primary care physicians to order them in their patients' annual check-ups, taking into account the group in which each patient falls. Preventive exams can prove to be a very good way to diagnose a disease in time and take action based on the result obtained.
When we carry out screening we take into account that we will do it in a group of people who qualify within a group at risk for suffering from a specific disease (Berry DA et al., 2018). This is, for example, the case of adults over 50 years of age where we do a colonoscopy every 5 years, to diagnose colon cancer early.
Diagnosing cancer early will be decisive in the evolution of the disease in the future, and how advanced the disease is at the time treatment begins (Berry DA et al., 2018). We know that without a doubt, a patient who undergoes all his screenings on time and visits his doctor with the regularity recommended by his primary care physician will have a much greater probability of being diagnosed at an early stage of any disease.
If we talk about Cancer, we know that the stage of the disease at the time treatment begins will be a crucial determinant for whether the patient survives or not. (IARC et al., 2019). As will also be the case for the types of treatment to which this patient will have access based on their stage, of course a patient diagnosed with Cancer in stage I of the disease is very likely to only need surgery, without the need to use Chemotherapy or radiation; However, for a patient with stage II or III, it is possible that both treatments will be ordered after surgery and if we are talking about the last stage of cancer and also if it is the case that the person also has Metastasis, then the three treatments will be ordered. but the possibility of survival will be reserved.
In medical practice we see many patients who do not give the importance that screenings have. These people generally do not visit their doctors as frequently as they have suggested and they do not undergo screening periodically. In these people we frequently see a fairly high incidence of late diagnoses, and therefore we see a high incidence of death due to diseases that, probably diagnosed early, could have been avoided. A more advanced medicine is always that which prevents and diagnoses early, each medical center in this country should set itself as a primary goal to prevent more chronic diseases and diagnose diseases early.
References:
Berry DA, Cronin KA, Plevritis SK, Fryback DG, Clarke l, Zelen M, Mandelblatt JS, Yakovlev AY, Habbema JD, Feuer EJ (2018) Effect of screening and adjuvant therapy on mortality from breast cancer. N Engl J Med 353 (17): 1784–1792.
IARC (2019) IARC Handbooks of Cancer Prevention – Breast Cancer Screening. International Agency for Research on Cancer; World Health Organization.
