{
  "abstract": "Background Changes in cancer screening and diagnosis practices have led to a growing number of overdiagnosed cancers, and that is a source of cancer surveillance bias challenging how to understand changing patterns in cancer incidence at a population level.Method and Results There is ample evidence that early detection and screening activities are the causes of overdiagnosis of scrutiny-dependent cancers, including thyroid and prostate cancers or melanoma. One major impact of this phenomenon is on the surveillance of these cancers because it biases incidence trends by mixing the impact of changes in the risk of the disease with changes in detection and screening practices. For instance, prostate cancer incidence closely follows trends in screening practices and thyroid cancer has reached epidemic rates due to increased detection efforts and incidental findings. At the same time, the true risk of these cancers has probably not changed substantially. As a result, there is a mismatch between the true burden of disease and the diagnosis trends. Surveillance bias can also lead to incorrect estimates of the association between an exposure (e.g., socioeconomic status) and a given cancer due to differences in cancer detection modalities across exposure subgroups.Conclusions Overdiagnosis of scrutiny-dependent cancers leads to surveillance bias, challenging the analysis of cancer trends and the identification of cancer risk factors. Being aware of this bias allows for a better assessment of the true burden of cancer and prevents wrong public health actions.Message: Changes in cancer screening and diagnosis practices have a major impact on the surveillance of scrutiny-dependent cancers, causing overdiagnosis. It results in a surveillance bias due to the mismatch between the true burden of disease and the diagnosis trends.",
  "authors": [
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Population Health Laboratory (#PoHealtLab), University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland"
      ],
      "name": "Arnaud Chiolero"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Population Health Laboratory (#PoHealtLab), University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland"
      ],
      "name": "Stefano Tancredi"
    }
  ],
  "title": "052 Cancer overdiagnosis and surveillance bias",
  "uid": "793dd104-42b2-57c8-8571-d2540b2226cb"
}