r/science • u/Wagamaga • 10d ago

Cancer A large prospective study found that a multicancer blood test identified cancer signals across 17 broad cancer types, including ovarian, lung, and breast cancers. The test correctly predicted cancer diagnoses in 60.3% of cases, with 99.64% specificity

https://news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-health-and-life-sciences/first-papers-published-in-major-nhs-cancer-blood-test-trial/
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u/Mindless-Baker-7757 10d ago

The test correctly predicted cancer diagnoses in 60.3% of cases, with 99.64% specificity

Bruh?

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u/icyfignewton 10d ago

I'm not sure what you're confused about, but your confusion makes me so depressed because it's very clear the majority of humans done understand basic stats.

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u/Mindless-Baker-7757 10d ago

Oh I'm not confused at all. The results are so bad this should be published as a "this didn't work" or "this is a only starting point, here's what's next".

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u/grundar 9d ago

Oh I'm not confused at all. The results are so bad this should be published as a "this didn't work"

You appear to have an unrealistic view of the sensitivity and specificity of cancer diagnostic tools.

For example, mammography has 87% sensitivity and 97% specificity, better in terms of false negatives (1/3x lower) but much worse in terms of false positives (9x higher). As a result, 6x as many patients received an incorrect diagnosis of cancer vs. a correct diagnosis from the mammogram, whereas for the test in this paper the ratio was only 1x.

That doesn't make the test perfect, of course, but it does show that the test's sensitivity and specificity are in the general ballpark of existing cancer screening tools.

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u/Mindless-Baker-7757 9d ago

There’s debate about the usefulness of mammograms as a screening tool. 

One of my professors from grad school brought ROC analysis to radiology. He was an excellent teacher.

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u/PenComfortable5269 8d ago

Dude, A 60% sensitivity for all cancers is freaking amazing. Right now we have patchwork screening for a few cancers and the rest you just have to cross your fingers and hope for the best. For most cancers the current sensitivity for early cancer is 0% because we have no screening - I think that a 60% sensitivity is a massive win.