The Vocabulary of Screening Tests
Preventive Health Screenings for Women
Volume 29 Number 5
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Like many things in the health care world, health screenings have their own vocabulary. A quick look at some of these terms will help you better understand these tests and what they mean for your health.
Cost/benefit analysis: Major medical organizations like the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which makes recommendations for regular screenings, considers this formula to determine if the benefits of the test, i.e., reducing deaths from breast cancer through screening mammograms, outweigh the financial, emotional and medical costs.6
For instance, none of the major organizations recommend that men undergo annual prostate cancer screening tests every year because there is still no strong evidence that finding prostate cancers early reduces the risk of dying from prostate cancer.7 So the decision to undergo prostate cancer screening should be made on an individual basis between a man and his doctor based on the man’s personal medical history.
Diagnostic test: If a screening test is positive, diagnostic testing is performed to positively identify any cancer or other health problem. Diagnostic tests include biopsies, MRI and ultrasound, among others.
Screening test: These tests look for a medical condition before you have any symptoms.
Sensitivity: This describes how good the test is at identifying the condition it is looking for. The more sensitive a test, the less likely it is to miss a problem. However, greater sensitivity can also reduce specificity.
Specificity: This applies to how often the test leads to false-positive results—for example, finding a suspected cancer on a mammogram that turns out to be a cyst. The greater the specificity, the lower the rate of false-positives. This is important because undergoing biopsies or further testing is not only emotionally difficult, but could, in rare instances, lead to medical complications. However, the more specific a test, the less sensitive it may be.
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