A latest analysis has suggested that bigger, broader studies need to be conducted to tell whether cancer screening actually saves lives or not.

The authors pointed out that cancer screening could be linked to fewer deaths from tumors, but detecting cancers doesn't necessarily save lives when fatalities due to all causes are taken into consideration.

In the BMJ, two doctors and a health care journalist argued that studies so far may have included quite few people to find out slight overall mortality benefits linked to screening,. It might be the case that any fall in cancer deaths because to screening could have been offset by fatalities related to bad effects of the tests themselves or of needless treatments.

Lead study author Dr. Vinay Prasad of Oregon Health and Science University said, “It is clearly the case that some deaths unrelated to cancer are due to screening, whether from complications of procedures or treatment of cancer”.

In an email, Prasad added that many cancers were also over diagnosed. This indicated that in some cases, screening finds out abnormal cells that would never have progressed to result into symptoms or complications, or not before the person died due to some other cause like old age.

Prasad said that yet due to screening, a person could undergo surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and more for treatment, and all of them have side effects.

If we consider stool testing for colorectal cancer, a study has found 128 cancer deaths in every 10,000 individuals who had undergone screening, in comparison to 192 cancer deaths in every 10,000 people who didn’t get screened.

However, when researches considered deaths from all causes, there wasn’t a significant difference between both the groups. The authors noted that for detection of any decrease in overall deaths in either group, the study would have required to be five times as huge as it was.