Reply to Interesting research on the over diagnosis of breast 'cancer' due to mammograms

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[quote=Anonymous]The article, is here and comes from BMJ:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150304075418.htm

One of the more interesting points made:

[i]Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide. Early trials reported that screening reduced the risk of dying from breast cancer by around 30% in women over 50 and led to publicly funded mammography screening programs in many countries in the 1980s and 90s.
Although this has led to large increases in detection of early breast cancer, rates of advanced cancer have declined only slightly or remained relatively stable, suggesting that mammography screening is detecting low risk or non-progressing breast cancer that would never have become life threatening.
In the NHS screening programme, 99% of women with screen detected breast cancer undergo surgery and around 70% also have radiotherapy and hormone therapy. If around 20% of these breast cancers are overdiagnosed, then about 20% of these women are undergoing treatments to "cure" a disease which they would never had had without screening, explains Barratt.
[/i]

While I did yearly mammograms, I will probably heed the new recommendations of going every two years, one, because mammogram radiation is a known cause of cancer and two, because of the high false-postive rates, and worse, the possibility of invasive treatments for something that might never have been significant in the first place.

With 3-D imaging now here, it's beginning to be pushed on women as 'cutting edge', when in reality, it has its own issues.

Bottom line - everyone has to make their own decisions based on their comfort level. [/quote]

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