Clinical and ethical differences between diagnosing and screening

Screening is often defined as systematic examinations of healthy citizens to identify those with asymptomatic disease. In our modern society many persons have chronic conditions and it is not so easy to draw the line between healthy and unhealthy citizens. Today, many health-care activities aim at detecting conditions at an early non-symptomatic stage of the disease process in order to be able to avoid possible progression to the next stage. On this basis, we suggest to broaden the definition of screening to reflect the realities of modern health care.