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my spine, there would be a 78 per cent chance that you’d find a
disc bulge and a
28 per cent chance of a disc protrusion, even though I
feel perfectly well.
The problem is that we’re doing more and more imaging and
tests on people and detecting things that look like a disease but
probably aren’t even causing the person a problem. We find them
incidentally as well.
An ‘incidentaloma’ is something that’s accidentally discovered.
For example, there’s been an increase in the apparent amount
of thyroid cancer over the last two decades, about three-fold in
Australia. A lot of that appears to be due to some of the imaging
being done to look at arteries in the neck, for example. People also
look at the thyroid [when they do that] and they may discover a
little lump there. Then they end up biopsying it and finding some
abnormal cells, which can look like cancer but wouldn’t have
disturbed a person in their lifetime.
Some might argue it’s better to be safe than sorry. What kinds of
problems can result from over-diagnosis? Is it