Overdiagnosis: harming people in the name of health

Abstract

As medical technological advances continue to become more readily available, diagnosis of pseudo-disease has hit the heart of medicine and has become one of the most harmful activities in modern medicine, both individually and collectively speaking as it threatens the sustainability of health systems. Here we describe a hypothetical case (but based on many similar real ones) of a young adult woman in her middle 30’s that has been diagnosed with a papillary thyroid cancer after she had been submitted to an excessive and unnecessary check-up elicited by a gynaecologist in a routine medical consultation.