Breast Mammograms Could Mean Over – Diagnosis of Breast Cancer
At the moment breast cancer is the second highest reason for death in ladies, after lung cancer. As a result, annual breast mammograms have become common for women over 40, or anyone at heavy risk of developing this threatening, disfiguring disease.
Now that plans like this are established, experts had expected that the amount of cases of complicated breast cancer would reduce, but that’s just not happening.
Instead the occurrence of breast cancer appears to have gone up since widespread screening became part of our yearly examinations. Why?
Girls know that early identification of breast cancer can reduce deaths, but that doesn’t make attending that annual mammogram any less worrying or uncomfortable.
We live with the testing as we’ve been told we want to find lumps when they are too little to feel or bring symptoms, before they’ve an opportunity to grow and cause trouble.
But do all cancers cause concerns?
Late last year a massive Norwegian research of mammography screening for breast cancer discovered that some invasive cancers may spontaneously regress given time, leaving no sign that they were even present in a woman’s body.
Makes you consider, now that we will screen for it, if this kind of cancer isn’t sometimes over diagnosed or over treated .
This latest BMJ report quoting an over-diagnosis rate for intrusive breast cancer of 35% could truly have you re-considering that annual mammogram.
Besides this kind of cancer, over-diagnosis has additionally been discussed for cancer of the prostate as well as neuroblastoma, melanoma, thyroid cancer and lung cancer.
The latest work on over-diagnosis came from researchers out of the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen.
The researchers analyzed the results of studies that spanned a 14-year period. 7 years before public mammography screenings were available, and 7 years after government run mammography-screening programs were running
They found an over-diagnosis rate of 52% for all cancers, 35% for aggressive breast cancer.
The info reports an increase in breast cancer cases shortly after the screening programs were put in place.
What this work suggests, as did the Norwegian research before it, that perhaps not all cancers need to be treated, some may grow too slowly to impact a patient and others may regress on their own.
It is important to understand that no doctor or current screening methodology can notice the difference between a cancer that’s’s life threatening and one that might not be.
In a BMJ editorial that’s’s printed together with the analysis, professor of drugs Dr. H. Gilbert Welch of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Research recognizes the problem of over-diagnosis, understanding the shock and apprehension a woman lives with after being given such news by her doctor.
Surgery and chemical treatment bring their own set of difficulties that are physically demanding and emotionally draining, and a horrible trial for patients and their loved ones. 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 bothering questions.
Till we know more, each lady has to decide for herself whether to keep on with annual breast mammograms, but it is clear that screening has let us uncover earlier cancers and kick-off treatment earlier and save many 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.