Tatyana
03-14-2009, 11:22 PM
There are quite a few misconceptions about breast screening that I think need to be addressed.
Whether or not you go for screening is up to you, but having the facts is essential.
A few things have been recommended based on evidence based medicine
- screening in women under 50, possibly even 60 is not recommended as the consistency of the breast tissue makes it nearly impossible to detect any tumours.
- there is harm associated with screening which is rarely mentioned in information pamphlets, which more often than not is the unnecessary treatment of harmless lesions that would not have been identified without screening.
Breast screening has not been nearly as successful as cervical screening
- if 2000 women are screened regularly for 10 years, one will benefit from the screening as she will avoid dying from breast cancer
- at the same time, 10 healthy women will, as a consequence, become cancer patients and will be treated unecessarily. These women will have either a part of their breast or the whole breast removed, and they will often receive radiotherapy and sometimes chemotherapy
- screening has resulted in 30% more surgery, 20% more mastectomies and more use of radiotherapy
- furthermore, about 200 healthy women will experience a false alarm. The psychological strain until one knows whether it was cancer, and even afterwards, can be severe.
This is the summary of findings from 6 countries that have publicly funded screening programs (England, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Finland and Norway).
This is from the Feb 21st issue of the British Medical Journal (BMJ vol 338 page 446)
Whether or not you go for screening is up to you, but having the facts is essential.
A few things have been recommended based on evidence based medicine
- screening in women under 50, possibly even 60 is not recommended as the consistency of the breast tissue makes it nearly impossible to detect any tumours.
- there is harm associated with screening which is rarely mentioned in information pamphlets, which more often than not is the unnecessary treatment of harmless lesions that would not have been identified without screening.
Breast screening has not been nearly as successful as cervical screening
- if 2000 women are screened regularly for 10 years, one will benefit from the screening as she will avoid dying from breast cancer
- at the same time, 10 healthy women will, as a consequence, become cancer patients and will be treated unecessarily. These women will have either a part of their breast or the whole breast removed, and they will often receive radiotherapy and sometimes chemotherapy
- screening has resulted in 30% more surgery, 20% more mastectomies and more use of radiotherapy
- furthermore, about 200 healthy women will experience a false alarm. The psychological strain until one knows whether it was cancer, and even afterwards, can be severe.
This is the summary of findings from 6 countries that have publicly funded screening programs (England, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Finland and Norway).
This is from the Feb 21st issue of the British Medical Journal (BMJ vol 338 page 446)