In: Nursing
Describe 2 consequences or limitations of false positive test results for a screening test to detect cervical cancer.
CONSEQUENCES ARE -
1.OVERDIAGNOSIS -
• cervical screening also detects underlying indolent pathologies.
These are usually not harmful.
• The purpose of cervical cancer screening is to detect potentially
harmful dysplasia , but the test will detect cases of even mild
forms of dysplasia.
• It leads to overdiagnosis of disease.
• overdiagnosis will lead the physicians to overtreat the patient.
The treatment medications will also cause their adverse drug
reactions.
• overdiagnosis will lead to wastage of medical resources and will
harm the patient at the same time.
2. NEGATIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT -
• False positives can have a negative impact on patient's
psychology.
• Abnormal test results are known to increase anxiety levels in
patient.
• They will develop a false perception of getting a cancer in
future , based upon the false cytology results.
• cervical cancer false positive females also worry about their
sexuality and fertility , in addition to the fear of the
disease.
• Adding to this, no researches have been done to measure the
psychological effects of such false positive results.