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The Case Against
Screening Cancer
Patients for Distress
James C. Coyne, Ph.D.
Health Psychology Program
University Medical Center, Groningen, NL
and
Institute for Health Policy
Rutgers University, NJ, USA
jcoynester@gmail.com
Evaluating Practice Guidelines
 Practice

guidelines from professional
organizations notoriously biased and not
evidence-based.



Standards developed for evaluating process
by which guidelines are constructed and
disseminated.
Guidelines for Distress
Screening
Deficient in
 Systematic

review of the literature.
 Transparency.
 Composition of guidelines committee
including formal involvement of patients,
frontline clinicians, and other key
stakeholders.
 Articulation of guidelines in terms of strength
of evidence.
 External review.
Evaluating Screening
Recommendations
 Screening

for medical problems is
commonplace in medical settings.

 Once

assumed clinicians should routinely
screen for problems that have significant
clinical and public health implications, if a
means existed.
Evaluating Screening
Recommendations
 Serious

re-evaluation with the recognition
that consultations with clinicians cannot
accommodate screening for all problems.

 More

than simply targeting an important
clinical problem, screening must lead to
improvement in patient outcomes.
Evaluating Screening
Recommendations
Burden of Proof Falls on Those Who Would
Recommend Screening to Demonstrate
Improves Patient Outcomes.
Screening for Distress
Evaluated


Screening for distress is useful only to the extent
that it improves patient outcomes beyond any
detection and treatment that is already provided as
part of existing standard care.



Screening program must identify a significant
number of distressed patients who are not already
recognized, engage those patients in treatment,
and obtain sufficiently positive outcomes to justify
costs and potential harms from screening.
What Screening is Not
Definition excludes settings in which patients

complete screening and responses are then
used to structure discussions, regardless of
whether the patients meet pre-established
thresholds for distress.

Definition excludes situations in which a
questionnaire is used to facilitate a
conversation independent of patients’ level of
distress.
Great for the Dutch!

Current Dutch Guideline: Detection of Need for Care
does not comply with proposed international guidelines
for mandated screening.
All cancer patients, not only those who screen positive
for distress, are offered opportunity to talk to a
professional about their needs and concerns, unless they
explicitly indicate they do not want to do so.
Our Evaluation of Screening
for Distress
Adopted the analytic framework of the U.S.
Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) in
searching for evidence of
(1)

the efficacy of interventions for reducing
distress; and
(2)

the efficacy of routine screening in
reducing distress among cancer patients.
.
Conclusion: Treatment studies reported modest improvement in
distress symptoms, but only a single eligible study was found on the
effects of screening cancer patients for distress, and distress did not
improve in screened patients versus those receiving usual care.
Because of the lack of evidence of beneficial effects of screening
cancer patients for distress, it is premature to recommend or
mandate implementation of routine screening.
Four other systematic
reviews
Variously indicate that
Screening

may improve communication
between patients and clinicians.
Stimulate

discussions of psychosocial and
mental health issues increase referrals to
specialty services.
Provisional work suggests that screening for
psychological distress holds promise and is
often clinically valuable, but it is too early to
conclude definitively that psychological
screening itself affects the psychological wellbeing of cancer patients.
Four other systematic
reviews ignore
High risk of bias in reporting of screening
studies.
Test

multiple endpoints measured at multiple
timepoints cherry-picked with confirmatory bias.
Selective

analyses.

retention, lack of intent to treat
Dodging the Basic Question?
Increasingly advocates of screening have the resources to
test whether it improves outcomes over routine care, but
dodge the question by excluding a routine care control.
“Previous work has already established the feasibility of
screening in cancer settings, and the superiority of
screening with triage to screening without triage (Carlson
et al, 2010), so it seemed somewhat unethical not to offer
some form of triage” (Carlson et al, BJC, 2012).
Relevant Clinical
Epidemiology Findings
Evaluating Screening for
Multiple Problems


Preventive services interventions in PC provide
a model for evaluating screening for multiple
needs.



PCPs encouraged to screen for many different
conditions, some with psychosocial components
(e.g., depression, intimate partner violence,
alcohol abuse, smoking).



Impossible to determine which screening is
beneficial and cost-effective, unless each
evaluated separately.
Trajectories of Distress
Much of the heightened distress reported by
cancer patients is self-limiting or resolves within
routine cancer care without specialty
psychosocial or mental health services.
Rate of overall decline in distress in
routine care dwarfs any differences
among conditions in screening
studies.
Many of the minority of patients with
persistent distress have prior
problems or non-cancer related
problems.
Unmet Needs Do Not Equal
Interest in Services
A substantial proportion of the cancer patients
indicating unmet needs do not wish to receive
services within the context of cancer care.
Rates of receipt of services not much higher after
diagnosis than what was received before
detection and diagnosis.
More interest in physical therapy and nutrition than
specialty psychosocial and mental health
services.
Screening Does Not
Substantially Increase
Uptake of Services.
 Only

a minority of cancer patients who screen
positive for distress subsequently receive
services.

 Limited

available data suggest that screening
is not a cost-effective way of getting cancer
patients into services.
The Pseudoscience of
Validating Screening
Cutpoints
Validation of Screening
Instruments
 Most

guidelines indicate that screening for
distress should make use of validated
instruments with published cutpoints to
identify distressed patients.

 Screening

instruments are most often
validated in terms of their performance as
measures of emotional distress
Distress is not a vital sign.
Optimal cutpoint on distress
thermometer varies between
cancer sites, clinical settings,
and health systems, and
cultures.
Validation of Screening
Instruments
 Inexplicable

variations in cutpoints from study

to study
 Studies



flawed by

floating cutpoints, capitalizing on chance
inclusion of patients already receiving treatment

 Fallacy

of assuming that for screening
purposes, it is instruments that are being
validated, not cutpoints
Hospital Anxiety and
Depression Scale
 Applications

of different factor analytic
techniques fail to identify separate anxiety
and depression subscales,
 At best, the items of the HADS converge on a
single general distress factor.
 Problems with HADS in translation.
 Patients unable to follow changes in
response keys, direction of items.
The HADS Should Not Be
Used
Coyne JC, van Sonderen
E: The Hospital Anxiety
and Depression Scale
(HADS) is dead, but like
Elvis, there will still be
citings. Journal of
Psychosomatic Research
73:77-78
Validation of Screening
Instruments Against Unmet
Need
Measures of unmet need insufficiently
developed psychometrically to serve as
comparison for calculating opitmal cutpoints.
Individual need items vary widely in correlation
with DT: a few strongly, few more moderately,
rest null to weak correlations.
What we can learn from
literature concerning
screening for depression
in medical settings
Where’s the evidence that screening for distress benefits cancer patients?
Conclusions of Review






No trials have found that patients who undergo
screening have better outcomes than patients who do
not when the same treatments are available to both
groups.
Existing rates of treatment, high rates of false-positive
results, small treatment effects and the poor quality of
routine care may explain the lack of effect seen with
screening.
Developers of future guidelines should require
evidence of benefit from randomized controlled trials
of screening, in excess of harms and costs, before
recommending screening.
Monitoring screening for distress with
quality indicators:
Pfizer gives $10 million
grant to American
psychologist to develop
quality indicators to monitor
oncologists’ screening for
distress.
American Mandated
Screening Practices
Oncologists cannot close their medical records
without indicating whether they have asked a
patient about distress.
Oncologists can comply with quality indicators by
asking simply “you feeling depressed?” and
prescribing antidepressants to patients who
answer “yes” without formal diagnosis, patient
education, or follow-up.
Depending on the Context,
Mandated Screening for
Distress May
Increase inappropriate prescription of
psychotropic medication in absence of
adequate diagnosis and follow up.
•

Disrupt patients readily accessing services
on their own by consuming scarce resources
and requiring patient psychiatric evaluation for
patients who screen positive.
•

•

Increase health disparities.
Screening for distress
should be limited to well
resourced settings…
where it may not be
needed.
Be prepared for
unintended
consequences.
Consider alternative uses
of same resources.
Raffle, A and Gray, M. (2007).
Screening: Evidence and
Practice . Oxford Press.
Screening must be delivered in a well functioning
total system if it is to achieve the best chance of
maximum benefit and minimum harm. The system
needs to include everything from the identification of
those to be invited right through to follow-up after
intervention for those found to have a problem.
Alternatives to Screening
• Enhanced support, access to services, and
follow up for patients already known to be
distressed or socially disadvantaged.
• Provide ready access for patients to discuss
unmet needs with professional and peer
counselors regardless of level of distress.
• Increase resources for addressing health
disparities in access to psychosocial services.
Give patients time to talk and listen to them,
don't let screening for distress get in the way.
Don't require cancer patients to interact
through computer touchscreen assessments.
Do give them the opportunity to talk about
their experiences, their needs, their concerns,
and their preferences regardless of their level
of distress.
Should we disconnect talking to
patients and determining
meetable unmet needs from
routine screening for distress?
Where is the Evidence?
Advocates for screening need to demonstrate
that implementation will not be associated with
Triaging
Rationing
Reduction

of services.

in the opportunity for cancer
patients to discuss concerns with oncology
staff.
Routine screening for
distress is currently not an
evidence-based practice.

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Where’s the evidence that screening for distress benefits cancer patients?

  • 1. The Case Against Screening Cancer Patients for Distress James C. Coyne, Ph.D. Health Psychology Program University Medical Center, Groningen, NL and Institute for Health Policy Rutgers University, NJ, USA jcoynester@gmail.com
  • 2. Evaluating Practice Guidelines  Practice guidelines from professional organizations notoriously biased and not evidence-based.  Standards developed for evaluating process by which guidelines are constructed and disseminated.
  • 3. Guidelines for Distress Screening Deficient in  Systematic review of the literature.  Transparency.  Composition of guidelines committee including formal involvement of patients, frontline clinicians, and other key stakeholders.  Articulation of guidelines in terms of strength of evidence.  External review.
  • 4. Evaluating Screening Recommendations  Screening for medical problems is commonplace in medical settings.  Once assumed clinicians should routinely screen for problems that have significant clinical and public health implications, if a means existed.
  • 5. Evaluating Screening Recommendations  Serious re-evaluation with the recognition that consultations with clinicians cannot accommodate screening for all problems.  More than simply targeting an important clinical problem, screening must lead to improvement in patient outcomes.
  • 6. Evaluating Screening Recommendations Burden of Proof Falls on Those Who Would Recommend Screening to Demonstrate Improves Patient Outcomes.
  • 7. Screening for Distress Evaluated  Screening for distress is useful only to the extent that it improves patient outcomes beyond any detection and treatment that is already provided as part of existing standard care.  Screening program must identify a significant number of distressed patients who are not already recognized, engage those patients in treatment, and obtain sufficiently positive outcomes to justify costs and potential harms from screening.
  • 8. What Screening is Not Definition excludes settings in which patients complete screening and responses are then used to structure discussions, regardless of whether the patients meet pre-established thresholds for distress. Definition excludes situations in which a questionnaire is used to facilitate a conversation independent of patients’ level of distress.
  • 9. Great for the Dutch! Current Dutch Guideline: Detection of Need for Care does not comply with proposed international guidelines for mandated screening. All cancer patients, not only those who screen positive for distress, are offered opportunity to talk to a professional about their needs and concerns, unless they explicitly indicate they do not want to do so.
  • 10. Our Evaluation of Screening for Distress Adopted the analytic framework of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) in searching for evidence of (1) the efficacy of interventions for reducing distress; and (2) the efficacy of routine screening in reducing distress among cancer patients. .
  • 11. Conclusion: Treatment studies reported modest improvement in distress symptoms, but only a single eligible study was found on the effects of screening cancer patients for distress, and distress did not improve in screened patients versus those receiving usual care. Because of the lack of evidence of beneficial effects of screening cancer patients for distress, it is premature to recommend or mandate implementation of routine screening.
  • 12. Four other systematic reviews Variously indicate that Screening may improve communication between patients and clinicians. Stimulate discussions of psychosocial and mental health issues increase referrals to specialty services.
  • 13. Provisional work suggests that screening for psychological distress holds promise and is often clinically valuable, but it is too early to conclude definitively that psychological screening itself affects the psychological wellbeing of cancer patients.
  • 14. Four other systematic reviews ignore High risk of bias in reporting of screening studies. Test multiple endpoints measured at multiple timepoints cherry-picked with confirmatory bias. Selective analyses. retention, lack of intent to treat
  • 15. Dodging the Basic Question? Increasingly advocates of screening have the resources to test whether it improves outcomes over routine care, but dodge the question by excluding a routine care control. “Previous work has already established the feasibility of screening in cancer settings, and the superiority of screening with triage to screening without triage (Carlson et al, 2010), so it seemed somewhat unethical not to offer some form of triage” (Carlson et al, BJC, 2012).
  • 17. Evaluating Screening for Multiple Problems  Preventive services interventions in PC provide a model for evaluating screening for multiple needs.  PCPs encouraged to screen for many different conditions, some with psychosocial components (e.g., depression, intimate partner violence, alcohol abuse, smoking).  Impossible to determine which screening is beneficial and cost-effective, unless each evaluated separately.
  • 18. Trajectories of Distress Much of the heightened distress reported by cancer patients is self-limiting or resolves within routine cancer care without specialty psychosocial or mental health services.
  • 19. Rate of overall decline in distress in routine care dwarfs any differences among conditions in screening studies. Many of the minority of patients with persistent distress have prior problems or non-cancer related problems.
  • 20. Unmet Needs Do Not Equal Interest in Services A substantial proportion of the cancer patients indicating unmet needs do not wish to receive services within the context of cancer care. Rates of receipt of services not much higher after diagnosis than what was received before detection and diagnosis. More interest in physical therapy and nutrition than specialty psychosocial and mental health services.
  • 21. Screening Does Not Substantially Increase Uptake of Services.  Only a minority of cancer patients who screen positive for distress subsequently receive services.  Limited available data suggest that screening is not a cost-effective way of getting cancer patients into services.
  • 22. The Pseudoscience of Validating Screening Cutpoints
  • 23. Validation of Screening Instruments  Most guidelines indicate that screening for distress should make use of validated instruments with published cutpoints to identify distressed patients.  Screening instruments are most often validated in terms of their performance as measures of emotional distress
  • 24. Distress is not a vital sign. Optimal cutpoint on distress thermometer varies between cancer sites, clinical settings, and health systems, and cultures.
  • 25. Validation of Screening Instruments  Inexplicable variations in cutpoints from study to study  Studies   flawed by floating cutpoints, capitalizing on chance inclusion of patients already receiving treatment  Fallacy of assuming that for screening purposes, it is instruments that are being validated, not cutpoints
  • 26. Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale  Applications of different factor analytic techniques fail to identify separate anxiety and depression subscales,  At best, the items of the HADS converge on a single general distress factor.  Problems with HADS in translation.  Patients unable to follow changes in response keys, direction of items.
  • 27. The HADS Should Not Be Used Coyne JC, van Sonderen E: The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) is dead, but like Elvis, there will still be citings. Journal of Psychosomatic Research 73:77-78
  • 28. Validation of Screening Instruments Against Unmet Need Measures of unmet need insufficiently developed psychometrically to serve as comparison for calculating opitmal cutpoints. Individual need items vary widely in correlation with DT: a few strongly, few more moderately, rest null to weak correlations.
  • 29. What we can learn from literature concerning screening for depression in medical settings
  • 31. Conclusions of Review    No trials have found that patients who undergo screening have better outcomes than patients who do not when the same treatments are available to both groups. Existing rates of treatment, high rates of false-positive results, small treatment effects and the poor quality of routine care may explain the lack of effect seen with screening. Developers of future guidelines should require evidence of benefit from randomized controlled trials of screening, in excess of harms and costs, before recommending screening.
  • 32. Monitoring screening for distress with quality indicators: Pfizer gives $10 million grant to American psychologist to develop quality indicators to monitor oncologists’ screening for distress.
  • 33. American Mandated Screening Practices Oncologists cannot close their medical records without indicating whether they have asked a patient about distress. Oncologists can comply with quality indicators by asking simply “you feeling depressed?” and prescribing antidepressants to patients who answer “yes” without formal diagnosis, patient education, or follow-up.
  • 34. Depending on the Context, Mandated Screening for Distress May Increase inappropriate prescription of psychotropic medication in absence of adequate diagnosis and follow up. • Disrupt patients readily accessing services on their own by consuming scarce resources and requiring patient psychiatric evaluation for patients who screen positive. • • Increase health disparities.
  • 35. Screening for distress should be limited to well resourced settings… where it may not be needed. Be prepared for unintended consequences. Consider alternative uses of same resources.
  • 36. Raffle, A and Gray, M. (2007). Screening: Evidence and Practice . Oxford Press. Screening must be delivered in a well functioning total system if it is to achieve the best chance of maximum benefit and minimum harm. The system needs to include everything from the identification of those to be invited right through to follow-up after intervention for those found to have a problem.
  • 37. Alternatives to Screening • Enhanced support, access to services, and follow up for patients already known to be distressed or socially disadvantaged. • Provide ready access for patients to discuss unmet needs with professional and peer counselors regardless of level of distress. • Increase resources for addressing health disparities in access to psychosocial services.
  • 38. Give patients time to talk and listen to them, don't let screening for distress get in the way. Don't require cancer patients to interact through computer touchscreen assessments. Do give them the opportunity to talk about their experiences, their needs, their concerns, and their preferences regardless of their level of distress.
  • 39. Should we disconnect talking to patients and determining meetable unmet needs from routine screening for distress?
  • 40. Where is the Evidence? Advocates for screening need to demonstrate that implementation will not be associated with Triaging Rationing Reduction of services. in the opportunity for cancer patients to discuss concerns with oncology staff.
  • 41. Routine screening for distress is currently not an evidence-based practice.