Assessing psychosocial/quality of life outcomes in screening: how do we do it better?

摘要

High quality research on the psychosocial outcomes of screening programmes is urgently needed. Assessing non-medical outcomes of screening presents constant challenges. Marteau and colleagues offor some insight into the complexities of assessing non-medical outcomes in their study of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) screening. The paper reports that self assessed health (SAH) was lower among men who were found to have an aortic aneurysm than men who did not, yet baseline measurement indicated that much of this difference prc-datcd screening. Poorer SAH seemed to predict having an aortic aneurysm. The authors suggest that the findings have implications for the methods used to assess psychological impact of screening tests and warn us not to erroneously conclude that poorer outcomes are necessarily a product of screening, if baseline differences are not assessed.