The Pros and Cons of Health Screening Essay

All women should be screened for certain cancers, including breast cancer, cervical cancer, and skin cancer. Your health

Screening tests are only available through biopsies. This means that basically once symptoms arise, one would be able to go and get a prognosis as to whether or not they have this disease.

In today’s society, women are not getting their mammograms done because they feel they are not necessary or because they are afraid of the results of the mammograms. Since women do not get their mammograms done, they are exposed to breast cancer. According to the National Cancer Institute, women who get mammograms, reduce about “15% to 20% in mortality from breast cancer” (“National Cancer Institute” 1). If women would increase the rate of getting mammograms, there will be less deaths in women.

The last three months have been a busy time, evaluating the needs of the SC Lions Foundation and South Carolina Lions Charitable Services, while continuing to work on grant opportunities and other sources of funding. SCLCS and SCLF are at a crossroads for many of the programs, funding and service opportunities. There are several areas that SCLCS and SCLF need to address for the organizations to remain successful.

Early detection of breast and cervical cancer reduced the burden of disease in women. The practices of Screening shown reduce the level of mortality and improve quality of life. The Every Woman Matters (EWM)stared in 1992 it is a federally-funded program designed to remove barrier to early screening by providing awareness and make screening more financially accessible to woman who have limited or no health insurance. The eligible women receive pay for office visits with associated clinical breast examination, pelvic examination, Papanicolaou smear test, and lab fees (Backer et al., 2004). Age-appropriate mammography and limited number of diagnostic test is also covered under program. In this paper I will

Due to the rare occurrence of such events, the research has been difficult to develop practical strategies for large amount of screening process. The degree of difficulty in terms of data collected by the researchers has been significant as it is hard to get a true absolute number of these events.

Potentially more ecologically valid to have screening test in the home setting compared to an office setting

Mammography, the most effective method for detecting breast cancer at its early stages, can identify malignancies before they can be felt and before symptoms develop. According to the report, from 2000 to 2010, the percentage of women who received a mammogram decline for women from poor and low-income households and for non-Hispanic whites. Furthermore, women from poor, low-income, and middle-income households were less likely to receive a mammogram compared with women from high-income households. In National Healthcare Quality Report (NHQR), among women ages 50-64, uninsured women were less likely to receive a mammogram compared with those with private insurance. The two main factors that serve as a barrier to early detection and cure for breast cancer are socio-economic status (no health insurance/poor access to healthcare) and lack of awareness of the importance of breast cancer screening. The impact of these factors is to the patients and their families is that frequently, breast cancer would be detected at an already advanced stage and the prognosis would be poor, leading to mortality. Cancer diagnosed early before spread has occurred are generally more amenable to treatment and cancers diagnosed late with extensive spread have poor prognoses. In these cases, treatment would just be of palliative in nature. Early detection through screening means early treatment and lower mortality

Cervical cancer is one of the highly popular disease for the women. Different programmes has been made up to fight against this deadly disease. New Zealand has one of the best screening programmes in the world. The establishment of National Cervical Cancer Screening Programme in NZ in 1990 had reduced a significant number of 60% of women who develop cervical cancer and who die from it since it was built. More than 1 million New Zealander women are enrolled in this programme and 95 % are eligible. The Cervical Cancer screening programme aims to; informing women about the importance of having the cervical screening tests; promoting cervical screening tests on a regular basis to women aged 20–70; ensuring high-quality and culturally appropriate services; supporting women with abnormal tests; ensuring there is regular monitoring to see that the goals of the programme are being met. The NCSP also acknowledges the importance of the Treaty of Waitangi in providing a screening programme that is successful for all New Zealand women.

Health screening, according to Durojaiye, (2009), is a systematic application of a test or inquiry to identify individuals at risk of a specific health problem. This enables further investigation or direct preventive action, among individuals who have not sought medical attention on account of their symptoms of that problem. The main aim of screening program therefore is to detect disease or risk factors among the general population, in order to carry out preventive, or therapeutic intervention because the highest benefit one can derive from a specific treatment is when the disease is less advanced (Wardle & Pope, 1992).

cancer. The use of film mammography can be very hard to recognize breast cancer in

Routine screening with the much-maligned pap smear has decreased the death rate from cervical cancer in women by as much at 83% [5]. Just having a competent midwife and obstetric support during childbirth can decrease the odds of dying in childbirth from 1 in 6 deliveries to less than 1 in 30,000

The disadvantages of the “high-risk” approach include difficulties and costs of screening, palliative and temporary, limited potential for individual and population and behaviourally inappropriate. Screening is costly and lengthy and for many diseases, screening would be effective if started early on in life. This process would have to be revisited at intervals as the abnormalities seeking to be detected are not present at a certain point in life. Palliative and temporary determinants are not identified when using this approach, and will always therefore exclude those who need the intervention. The limited potential for an individual and population refers to the difficulties in predicting the future of an individual, as it is explained in the Framingham study.

While effective prevention programmes hold out the promise of dramatically decreasing the incidence of cervical cancer, any large-scale screening effort directed towards healthy populations can have both positive and negative outcomes.

Cervical cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer related mortality in countries such as India accounting for more than 17% of all cancer deaths in women aged 30-69. [3] Cervical cancer is one such type of cancer in which screening plays a significant role. Clinical trials done in below poverty level populations do encounter ethical issues to a certain extent with regards to informed consent as most or all of these patients are illiterate. However informed consent is extremely important when justifying data for such clinical trials. Countries such as US have implemented Pap smear screening as one of the most important cervical cancer screening methods. In countries as densely populated as India where proper healthcare facilities does not reach slums and extremely poverty stricken societies, alternatives for screening are indicated- VIA or Visual inspection with acetic acid