Catching disease -2

Q&A: Ovarian cancer
In these preliminary results, doctors found nearly half of the cancers detected were at an early stage. Normally, doctors would only catch about 15 percent of early ovarian cancer patients.
The study was published online Wednesday in the medical journal, Lancet Oncology.
"I'm cautiously optimistic," said Robert Smith, director of cancer screening at the American Cancer Society. Smith was not connected to the study.
"This may make a difference to saving lives, but we don't know that right now," he said. Smith said the tumors detected in screening are sometimes not the ones that kill.
To know if catching ovarian cancer early saves lives, researchers must wait until the study finishes in 2014 to look at all the data. The study was mainly paid for by Britain's Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK and the Department of Health.
"Picking up cancer early is a prerequisite to saving lives," said Ian Jacobs, one of the study's authors and dean of health sciences research and director of the Institute for Women's Health at University College London. "But the question is, is this early enough?"
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Experts will also have to weigh the tests' benefits against its costs. "It's a big and expensive jump to decide that (national) screening programs might be beneficial," Smith said.
With any screening test, authorities must determine whether the tests save enough lives to merit the financial and other costs, like patients who will have unnecessary surgeries or psychological distress.
Several companies in the United States are seeking approval from the Food and Drug Administration to sell their tests.