Among people in their 70s and 80s, cancer screenings often detect slow-growing tumors that are unlikely to cause problems in patients' lifetimes. These patients often die of something else — from dementia to heart disease or pneumonia — long before their cancers would ever have become a threat, said Dr. Deborah Korenstein, chief of general internal medicine at New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Prostate cancers, in particular, are often harmless.

Patients with dementia, for example, rarely live longer than a few years.

"It generally takes about 10 years to see benefit from cancer screening, at least in terms of a mortality benefit," Korenstein said.

Enthusiasm for cancer screenings runs high among patients and doctors, both of whom tend to overestimate the benefits but underappreciate the risks, medical research shows.

In some cases, women are being screened for tumors in organs they no longer have. In a study of women over 30, nearly two-thirds who had undergone a hysterectomy got at least one cervical cancer screening, including one-third who had been screened in the past year, according to a 2014 study in JAMA Internal Medicine.

In some cases, women are being screened for tumors in organs they no longer have. In a study of women over 30, nearly two-thirds who had undergone a hysterectomy got at least one cervical cancer screening

About This Series

In this series, "Treatment Overkill," Kaiser Health News investigates the causes and consequences of medical overtreatment, both for patients and the healthcare system.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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