Living Well Imagine getting a false-positive result for a cancer that likely means you have less than a year to live. And a 94% chance you'll be dead in five years.
It can lead to undue stress and anxiety, more invasive testing, and the multiple medical side effects that you get with overtreatment.
Thankfully, false positives aren't common. But most current tests available to screen for pancreatic cancer aren't able to catch the disease in an early enough stage to do much good.
Due to the short life span of people after diagnosis and the inability of current screenings to catch the cancer in early stages, screening has no effect on the mortality rate from this cancer.
Essentially... once you can detect it, it's past the point of no return. And pancreatic-cancer patients usually have few symptoms until the cancer spreads to other organs.
So if your doctor tells you that you need a pancreatic-cancer test, make sure to question him about the reasons and the usefulness of the test. And if a test is positive, confirm it before dangerous treatment begins.
Have you had a false positive on a medical test? Or perhaps a family member or loved one... Tell us about your experience, here.