TempoLife › Funktsioonid › Health screening by age: which test and when › after-an-abnormal-result

When the result is not normal

A positive screening test is a sorting decision, not a diagnosis. Knowing the shape of the pathway ahead of time removes most of the fear from the days of waiting.

This page describes screening programmes; it is not a diagnosis, not a personal risk assessment and not a substitute for your own health service. Age bands are set nationally and change — the invitation you receive, and the body named on your country page, outrank anything written here. Screening is for people without symptoms: a new lump, blood you can see, a mole that has changed, unexplained weight loss or a sudden change in vision or hearing needs a clinician now, whatever a recent screening result said.

Positive means sorted, not diagnosed

Screening tests are deliberately built to over-refer. They are set to catch nearly everyone who has the disease, accepting that they will also flag people who do not, because the cost of a missed cancer is much higher than the cost of an extra appointment. The consequence is arithmetic rather than reassurance-speak: in every programme on this site, most people with a positive screening result turn out not to have cancer. A recall after a mammogram, a positive stool test, a positive HPV test — each is the system doing what it was designed to do, which is sort a population into "no further action" and "look properly".

The waiting is the hard part, and it is normal

The days between an abnormal result and the appointment that resolves it are, for most people, worse than anything that follows. It is worth knowing that this is expected, that the Cochrane review of mammography counted this anxiety as a genuine harm of screening rather than dismissing it, and that it is not evidence about your result — the person with nothing wrong and the person with an early cancer feel identical during that week. Practical things that help: ask exactly what the next appointment involves and roughly how long the result takes, tell one person, and put a date in the diary after the appointment for something ordinary.

What to take to the appointment

The invitation or result letter, a list of your current medicines including anything you buy yourself, and any relevant dates — when you noticed a symptom, when your last test was, what your mother or father had and at what age. Take someone with you if you can, not for support but because two people remember more of a consultation than one. Write your questions down before you go; the three that matter most are what happens next, when you will know, and who to ring if you do not hear.

What not to do with the internet

Do not look up survival figures. They describe populations diagnosed years ago, at every stage from incidental to advanced, treated with what was available then, and they cannot say anything about a result you do not yet have. If you must read something, read about the procedure you are going to have rather than the disease you might not have. And be careful with forums during the waiting week: the people who post are disproportionately those whose story went badly, which is exactly the sample you do not want when a large majority of results like yours are about to come back clear.

If it does turn out to be something

Screen-detected disease is, by construction, usually earlier than the disease that presents with symptoms, and earlier usually means more options and less treatment. A polyp removed at colonoscopy is a cancer that never happened. Cervical cell changes treated in an outpatient appointment are the same. There is no useful general statement beyond that, because the next step depends entirely on what was found — but "found by screening" is a meaningfully better starting point than "found because it hurt", and it is worth holding onto during the week that decides which one you are in.

Sources: Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews — Screening for breast cancer with mammography (on anxiety from false positives) · Council Recommendation of 9 December 2022 on cancer screening (CELEX 32022H1213(01)) · checked 2026-09-07

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