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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Dec 4.
Published in final edited form as: Ann Intern Med. 2013 Jun 4;158(11):831–838. doi: 10.7326/0003-4819-158-11-201306040-00008

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Link between overdiagnosis and lead time. A non-overdiagnosed case (upper panel) is a screen-detected case who would have presented clinically before dying of non-cancer causes. An overdiagnosed case (lower panel) is a screen-detected case who would have died of non-cancer causes before presenting clinically, i.e., a screen-detected case who would not have been diagnosed without screening. The lead time is the time from screen detection to clinical diagnosis. The longer the lead time, the greater the chance of overdiagnosis. Similarly, the higher the risk of other-cause death, the greater the chance of overdiagnosis.