Disutility associated with cancer screening programs: A systematic review

OBJECTIVES: Disutility allows to identify how much population values intervention-related harms contributing to knowledge on the benefits/harms ratio of cancer screening programs. This systematic review evaluates disutility related to cancer screening applying a utility theory framework. METHODS: Using a predefined protocol, Embase, Medline Ovid, Web of Science, Cochrane, Google scholar and supplementary sources were systematically searched. The framework grouped disutilities associated with breast, cervical, lung, colorectal, and prostate cancer screening programs into the screening, diagnostic work up, and treatment phases. We assessed the quality of included studies according to the relevance to target population, risk of bias, appropriateness of measure and the time frame. RESULTS: Out of 2840 hits, we included 38 studies, of which 27 measured (and others estimated) disutilities. Around 70% of studies had medium to high-level quality. Measured disutilities and Quality Adjusted Life Years loss were 0–0.03 and 0–0.0013 respectively in screening phases. Both disutilities and Quality Adjusted Life Years loss had similar ranges in diagnostic work up (0–0.26), and treatment (0.09–0.27) phases. We found no measured disutilities available for lung cancer screening and—little evidence for disutilities in treatment phase. Almost 40% of the estimated disutility values were above the range of measured ones. CONCLUSIONS: Cancer screening programs led to low disutities related to screening phase, and low to moderate disutilities related to diagnostic work up and treatment phases. These disutility values varied by the measurement instrument applied, and were higher in studies with lower quality. The estimated disutility values comparing to the measured ones tended to overestimate the harms.