Most patients are at below-average risk

"We can work out ways to be smarter about screening and prevention," Vickers, a researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said by email. "If we are more sophisticated about working out risk for individuals, then we can better advise them as to whether prevention and screening would lower their risk enough to make it worth it for them." Take lung cancer, for example. "Lung cancer screening isn't even recommended for all smokers, let alone nonsmokers," Vickers said. "Screening generally does more harm than good for people who are at low risk." While that's a fairly clear-cut case, the discussion about risks and benefits for treatment get murkier with other conditions, such as prostate cancer or heart disease, he said.



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