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Wired Health: ‘Early Diagnosis Often Benefits Science But Not The Patient’

Neurologist And Writer Suzanne O’Sullivan Spoke On The Concept Of ‘Overdiagnosis’

 
• By Natasha Barrow

Early diagnosis can be “detrimental” to patients, Suzanne O'Sullivan, neurologist and author of “The Age of Diagnosis,” argued at the Wired Health conference on 18 March. "You save one life from screening 2,000 women for breast cancer, but you also treat 10 women unnecessarily," she said.

Nurse
(Shutterstock)

“Diagnosis is not inert. We measure [diagnosis] in the number of lives saved. But what happens to all those other people who are subjected to medical monitoring that they didn’t necessarily need?” Suzanne O’Sullivan, neurologist and author of “The Age of Diagnosis,” asked the audience at the Wired Health conference held in London on 18 March.

“The minute you turn a healthy [person] into a patient through screening, you affect their relationship with their body

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