Meditations and Learnings

Meditations and Learnings

Length Time Bias

This bias results in an overestimation of the survival duration resultant from the detection of more cases of disease which are slower in their progression. If a disease can manifest itself at different rates of progression, a screening will more often detect the cases that progress more slowly, because the larger duration over which they exist means there is more opportunity to find them. When more of the cases detected are skewed towards being slower progressing the screening can incorrectly look to be beneficial.