Science Memes

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Breast Cancer (mander.xyz)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago

Not at all, in this case.

A false positive of even 50% can mean telling the patient "they are at a higher risk of developing breast cancer and should get screened every 6 months instead of every year for the next 5 years".

Keep in mind that women have about a 12% chance of getting breast cancer at some point in their lives. During the highest risk years its a 2 percent chamce per year, so a machine with a 50% false positive for a 5 year prediction would still only be telling like 15% of women to be screened more often.