More Needed About Overuse

January 24, 2012

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Mount Sinai School of Medicine's Deborah Korenstein and her colleagues report in the Archive of Internal Medicine that the literature concerning overuse of the US healthcare system is not extensive. The researchers searched Medline for studies published between 1987 and 2009 about overuse and found 172 articles on the subject. Of those, 38 concerned diagnostic tests, as compared to 59 studies of antibiotics for upper respiratory tract infections. "Overuse rates for prostate cancer screening with PSA ranged from 16.1% to 36.1% in 3 studies, and a study addressing Papanicolaou smears for cervical cancer screening found that 58.0% of ineligible women were screened," Korenstein et al. report. More research into overuse is needed, they add.

HT: @CLN_AACC

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