Why early detection matters

At Catch, we leverage deep scientific expertise paired with machine learning to quantify your personal cancer risk. When we quantify cancer risk and recommend actions to reduce it, we are focusing on the risk of getting cancer. A separate, second type of risk is one’s risk of dying from cancer. It’s critical to understand both of these risks, and take targeted steps to reduce both.

Your Catch Action Plan includes a number of personalized recommendations on how to lower your risk of getting cancer. This includes everything from adopting new diet and lifestyle habits to changing elements of your environment. 

However, it’s impossible to take your risk of developing cancer to zero. Cell mutations can occur randomly, or as a result of aging, and those mutations can become cancerous even in individuals with no known risk factors for a given cancer type. That’s why it’s equally important to follow a cancer screening plan. Screening is the number one way to reduce your risk of dying from cancer. 

The difference between early and late detection has a staggering impact on health outcomes. For the two most common types of cancer in America, breast and prostate, the 5-year survival rate of cancer detected at stage 1 is nearly 100%.  By comparison, those survival rates drop to just 27-30% when the cancer is detected at stage 4. See additional detail on common cancers below^[1]: 

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Beyond the significant disparity in survival rates, there’s a quality of life disparity that’s rarely discussed. For many common cancers, early detection can lead to both simpler and more effective treatment plans. When caught early, many cancers can be fully eradicated with a single surgery, with or without a brief or mild series of chemotherapy treatments. When cancer has spread, treatment often involves lengthy, painful courses of chemotherapy and/or radiation with significant side-effects, and surgeries may be both less effective and more likely to cause complications. 

In spite of the overwhelming data on the benefits of early detection, cancer screening guidelines are insufficient, outdated, and often inaccessible. Guidelines are typically based on just one variable – the patient’s age – and often ignore other factors that are much more relevant to individual risk level.  The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), one of the leading organizations to define screening protocols, updates cancer screening guidelines just once every 5-15 years. 

To better understand how this can impact individual patients, take the example of recent shifts in colorectal cancer diagnoses. The American Cancer Society (ACS) last updated its colorectal screening guidelines in 2018, lowering the age of recommended screening from 50 to 45^[2]. However, a 2023 report from the ACS noted that rates of colorectal cancer in individuals younger than 50 have increased by about 3% a year since 2010^[3]; the rate increase since 2018 is now significant, yet it has not been addressed in any meaningful way. Another study found that Millennials have twice the lifetime risk of being diagnosed with colon cancer compared to someone born in 1950^[4], and that the disease is nearly 60% more likely to be diagnosed at a late stage. It’s worth noting that no Millennials have yet turned 45, meaning they do not yet qualify for USPSTF recommended screening.

The same troubling lack of proactive screening holds across multiple types of cancer. Individuals with a family member who has had thyroid cancer have over 10 times the risk of developing this cancer, yet there is no established screening protocol recommending thyroid ultrasound. In many Asian countries, upper endoscopies are recommended as a regular screening tool beginning at age 50. There is no established screening protocol for stomach cancer in the United States, not even for high risk individuals – likely in part due to the fact that there is no protocol for assessing stomach cancer risk in the first place. 

Despite these troubling trends–increasing rates of cancer in younger individuals, cancers being caught later in their progression in both younger and older patients–screening recommendations are still primarily pegged to age, where they’re even present. Currently, the USPSTF has proactive screening protocols for just four cancers: cervical, breast, prostate, and colorectal. Together, these represent just under 37% of new cancer diagnoses, meaning nearly two-thirds of cancers that will be diagnosed in a given year have not been proactively screened for. 

At Catch, we are on a mission to change the screening paradigm to better reflect rapidly-shifting trends in cancer diagnoses, as well as individual risk factors that can and should impact one’s personal screening plan. Catch members receive a comprehensive personalized screening protocol based on our AI-powered risk model. We discuss the benefits and risks of each type of screening, along with insurance coverage and the potential financial implications. Proactive screening is one of the most effective tools in winning the fight against cancer, and we believe that everyone should be empowered with a personalized plan that works for them. 

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