How might you feel about being told you can stop cancer screening? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:05 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Just as there’s a point in life when cancer screenings should begin, so too is there a point at which they can stop. That’s usually because the likelihood that a cancer will kill you in the time you are likely to live is low, but Nancy Schoenborn, a geriatrics expert at Johns Hopkins whose research looks at this issue, says messaging is everything.

Schoenborn: Guidelines sometimes use an upper age cut off some guidelines have changed to a life expectancy threshold which is intended to be more holistic and capture the variation in how older adults can function and is healthy or not healthy in the same age. We know that at the same age people can be quite different. My prior work has found that the label and the concept of life expectancy doesn't always resonate and they didn't really like the guidelines.     :31 

Schoenborn points out that a healthy 70 year old versus someone who has had several chronic illnesses for 10 years bring different points of view to the table, and these need to be acknowledged. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.