Over-diagnosis and over-treatment in Ophthalmology: A review of the literature.

OBJECTIVE

To determine if the pernicious effects of over-diagnosis and over-treatment have been studied in the most common ocular diseases.

MATERIAL AND

METHODS

Bibliographic search conducted in PubMed.

RESULTS

The search algorithm used retrieved 29 articles related with the topic. Most of them address the issue tangentially. Only 4 of them address the problem directly. One of them focuses on the problem of over-diagnosis and over-treatment in idiopathic intracranial hypertension. The remaining 3 focus on the problem of over-diagnosis and over-treatment in glaucoma.

CONCLUSION

The ophthalmology community has thought very little about the detrimental effects of over-diagnosis and over-treatment.