Should Recommendations for Cancer Screening Differentiate on Race?

Abstract

Should Recommendations for Cancer Screening Differentiate on Race?Cancer screening recommendations routinely differentiate among individuals on the basis of their age. Starting and stopping ages are an attempt to hit the screening sweet spot: the effort to capture a population at relatively high risk of dying from the target cancer (i.e., not too young), while still at relatively low risk of dying from something else (i.e., not too old). Recommendations may also differentiate on the basis of sex (e.g., breast cancer screening is only recommended for women, although men do die from the disease) or a history of high-risk behaviors (e.g., lung cancer screening in heavy smokers).