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How do you apply this
method when making screening decisions? You can compare the person's
life expectancy to the length of time required for a screening
test to show advantage. For example, the survival curves for colon
cancer is the same for three years whether or not a person has
undergone colon cancer screening. Eventually, the survival rate
for screened persons is better than the survival rate for unscreened
persons. If a person was expected to live two years, she would
not live long enough to benefit from colon cancer screening. The
figure shows a similar relationship in screening women over age
50 for breast cancer.
The methodology described
in this section is a theoretically sound, self-consistent means
to estimating life expectancy when a person has one or more
serious diseases that can shorten one's lifespan.
| Figure
3.7.1: Death Rate and Screening Test
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