What you want to do is look at stage at presentation, treatment costs by stage, and screening costs. These were done for nearly every recommended screening program.
The available evidence behind currently recommended screening programs unequivocally shows improved cancer-specific survival and earlier stage at diagnosis.
> What you want to do is
No, what I want to do is assess whether broad screening programs actually make people live longer. Overall survival is the correct metric. Evidence in favor of the claim is lacking.
> none of the studies are sufficiently powered for OS.
"Sufficiently powered" is relative to what size of effect you want to detect--which you haven't specified, so I'm not sure how you can make the assertion that none of the studies are sufficiently powered.
> The available evidence behind currently recommended screening programs unequivocally shows improved cancer-specific survival and earlier stage at diagnosis.
These outcomes ignore negative effects of screening on people who don't have cancer, which is why I'm not interested in them. And yes, there are negative effects, and no, they are not negligible.
Correct according to whom? If you want to choose only one metric quality adjusted life years is likely the best one.
While OS may be your goal that's not the primary endpoint of screening programs.
Some examples of why OS is limited: breast lumpectomy vs mastectomy and systemic therapy or polypectomy vs neoadjuvant therapy and colonic resection are both associated with very high morbidity that is very important to patients. The vast majority of patients care about quality of life.
> "Sufficiently powered" is relative to what size of effect you want to detect--which you haven't specified, so I'm not sure how you can make the assertion that none of the studies are sufficiently powered.
We do not expect any one screening program to have a large change on overall survival because there are many ways to die, very few studies are powered to detect the small differences expected. The reference below does some modeling and discusses cancer-specific vs all-cause mortality for your perusal.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cam4.2476
> These outcomes ignore negative effects of screening on people who don't have cancer, which is why I'm not interested in them.
See morbidity discussion around delayed diagnosis above.
> And yes, there are negative effects, and no, they are not negligible.
As you're choosing to limit the discussion to overall survival, do you have any data to support the claim that screening has more than a negligible negative effect?
There is a better argument to be made for other harms of screening like cost and stress but if we want to discuss these negative effects of screening we also have to step back from overall survival and discuss morbidity benefits.
ETA:
> 2) that I'm misinterpreting something, given that I didn't really offer any interpretation at all.
This is your interpretation, and is an incorrect one:
> The evidence in favor of mass screening programs in the hope of early detection is actually weak to non-existent [1].
The evidence you cite says nothing about early detection and treatment paradigms.
By all means, if you have studies showing that broad screening programs are beneficial in terms of overall (not cancer-case only) QALY then please share them. I'm guessing you don't.
> As you're choosing to limit the discussion to overall survival, do you have any data to support the claim that screening has more than a negligible negative effect?
Do you have any data to support the claim that screening has more than a negligible positive effect on overall survival? (No).
Stop trying to put the burden of proving a negative on me. If you want to advocate for spending ten of billions of dollars annually (not to mention time and stress) on broad screening programs you bear the burden of demonstrating that's useful.
If we can afford to spend the money on screening everyone certainly we can afford to spend less money to run a large randomized trial screening only some people, but advocates of the screening programs won't stand for it because they are convinced of their own righteousness and refuse to admit uncertainty about whether the screening programs are actually doing more good than harm.
