Reply to Is it worth it to get a 3-D mammogram?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think it's worth it.  I was just diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer; .7 mm at age 45 with no known high risk factors and my Dr. thinks  the 3D mammogram and radiologist saved my life.  If it wasn't picked up, who knows what stage it would be at my next mammogram a year later.[/quote]

I'm not exactly commenting on your situation because your doctor knows best what it was, but there is a myth out there about early detection and breast cancer that it saves lives and generally that is not the case.  The aggressive cancers that are going to metastasize will do so early on, so catching it on a mammogram won't alter its course.  And the slower growing cancers will not metastasize even if you catch it later.  There are those somewhere in between that may benefit from early detection.  But often women will say their lives were saved when their cancer was caught at stage I or DCIS and the science, generally, doesn't support that in most cases.  This is the crux of the whole mammogram debate.

My personal experience was that the mammogram didn't pick up my cancer, though I had a lump, and it wasn't properly diagnosed until a year later.  Obviously I didn't have early detection, and I wasn't diagnosed at stage I.  But I survived.  had it gone another year I probably would not have.  But catching it after I found a lump didn't make a difference.[/quote][/quote]

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