Why Long lead time & shorter screening time enhances the utility of a screening tool? Please explain…
If lead time is longer, we get more amount of time to diagnose a particular disease.
If screening time is less,which means that if we screen a disease in it’s early stage, we get more amount of time to treat the person and the prognosis improves. Example- Colon carcinoma if screened at an earlier stage has very high chances of better prognosis and survival rates.
longer lead time - related to early diagnosis… while screening time is time between first possible point of diagnosis and critical point of diagnosis… the time between these ‘if’ lesser relates to concept that we are diagnosing the condition before the critical time… usually in practice, we tend to check for lead time for any investigation to asses the diagnostic usefulness of an investigation in the disease
thank you so much sir