Mammograms Could Possibly Mean Over – Diagnosis of Breast Cancer
Today breast cancer is the second highest cause of death in women, after lung cancer. As a consequence, yearly breast mammograms became common for girls over forty, or anyone at high risk of getting this threatening, disfiguring disease.
Now that plans like this are in place, experts had anticipated that the number of cases of complicated breast cancer would reduce, but that's not occuring.
Instead the incidence of breast cancer appears to have gone up since universal screening became part of our yearly examinations. Why?
Ladies know that early detection of breast cancer can reduce deaths, but that doesn't make attending that yearly mammogram any less stressful or uncomfortable.
We endure the tests because we've been told we want to find mounds when they're too tiny to feel or show symptoms, before they have a chance to grow and cause trouble.
But do all cancers cause complications?
Late last year a massive Norwegian study of mammography screening for breast cancer found that some aggressive cancers can spontaneously regress given time, leaving no sign that they were ever present in a woman's body.
Makes you wonder, now that we are able to screen for it, if this type of cancer isn't sometimes over diagnosed or over handled.
This latest BMJ report citing an over-diagnosis rate for invasive breast cancer of 35% could truly have you re-thinking that yearly mammogram.
Besides this type of cancer, over-diagnosis has also been mentioned for cancer of the prostate as well as neuroblastoma, melanoma, thyroid cancer and lung cancer.
The latest work on over-diagnosis comes from analysts out of the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen.
The team looked at the findings of studies that lasted a 14-year period. 7 years before public mammography screenings were available, and seven years after government administered mammography-screening programs were in place in five different countries ( united kingdom, Canada, New South Wales, Australia, Manitoba, Sweden and areas in Norway )
They found an over-diagnosis rate of 52% for all cancers, 35% for aggressive breast cancer.
The info reports a jump in breast cancer incidence just after the screening programs were established.
What this work counsels, as did the Norwegian study before it, that perhaps not all cancers need to be treated, some may grow too slowly to impact a patient and others may resolve on their own.
It's important to understand that no doctor or current screening method can tell the difference between a cancer that is's dangerous and one that won't be.
In a BMJ editorial that is's published together with the research, professor of medicine Dr. H. Gilbert Welch of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Research understands the difficulty of over-diagnosis, understanding the injury and terror a woman lives with after being given such news by her doctor.
Surgery and chemo bring on their own set of problems that are physically demanding and emotionally draining, and a horrible trial for patients and families. Particularly those whose cancers may not have needed to be treated at all.
While this latest research is still not an excuse, or recommendation, to postpone your annual mammogram, it does raise some rather nagging questions.
Until we all know more, each lady has to decide for herself whether to continue with annual breast mammograms, but it is clear that screening has let us uncover earlier cancers and kick-off appropriate treatment earlier and save many more peoples lives.
Next - just head on over to the Daily Health Bulletin for more information on mammogram results, plus for a limited time get 5 free fantastic health reports. Click here for more details on this mammogram results studies.