Too many cancer screenings wasted on those facing death

Older patients who aren't expected to live more than another decade are still being screened too often for cancers, causing more harm than good, a study found. More than half of men 65 and older who had a very high risk of dying in nine years were screened for prostate cancer, a slow-moving disease, according to research today in JAMA Internal Medicine. Almost 38 percent of older women with a similar life expectancy were screened for breast cancer and 31 percent were screened for cervical cancer despite some having undergone a hysterectomy, which means they often had no cervix.