Overdiagnosis is the diagnosis of "disease" that will never cause symptoms or death during a patient's lifetime. Newer, more accurate technologies, and the desire to detect disease even earlier means Overdiagnosis is on the rise.
Understanding the impact of Overdiagnosis, how to detect it and what to do about it might stem its inexplicable rise and prevent the epidemic of unnecessary testing. Professor Carl Heneghan is a board member of the Preventing Overdiagnosis conference and has an active interest in diagnostic reasoning and how this can, or in some cases cannot, make a real difference to patient outcomes. He is also Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at the Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford, Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, a fellow of Kellogg College and an NHS Honorary Clinical Consultant and GP.
