• Mammograms may not make much difference. Yes, there
has been about a 25 percent drop in breast-cancer death rates since
1990. But some researchers point to treatment—not mammograms—as being
mainly responsible for the decline. Evidence comes from a study of three
pairs of European countries: In each pair, mammograms were introduced
in one country 10 to 15 years earlier than in the other. Yet mortality
rates are virtually identical, indicating mammography hadn’t made a
difference. Further, mammograms, are not so great at detecting the most
lethal forms of disease—a “triple negative,” for example—at a treatable
phase. Aggressive tumors also tend to progress too quickly, cropping up
between screenings.
• Unnecessary treatments can be harmful.
“According to a survey of randomized clinical trials involving 600,000
women around the world, for every 2,000 women screened annually over 10
years, 1 life is prolonged but 10 healthy women are given diagnoses of
breast cancer and unnecessarily treated, often with therapies that
themselves have life-threatening side effects,” Orenstein reports. Those
treatments include Tamoxifen, which carries risks of stroke, blood
clots and uterine cancer, while radiation and chemotherapy weaken the
heart.
• Newer diagnosis is on the rise. Many
women today are told they have ductal carcinoma in situ (D.C.I.S.), or
“Stage Zero” cancer, in which abnormal cells are found in the lining of
the breast’s milk ducts. The diagnosis of D.C.I.S., in fact, now
accounts for about a quarter of new breast-cancer cases, totaling some
60,000 a year. These are oftentimes the women we see celebrated at
pink-ribbon events as “triumphs of early detection.” But D.C.I.S. does
not spread; “in situ” means “in place.” The only danger is if it
develops into an invasive cancer, and right now, there’s no way to know
that, which is one of the major things in this fight that needs to
change, say researchers. In the mean time, says Laura Esserman, director
of the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center at the University of
California, San Francisco: “D.C.I.S. is not cancer. It’s a risk factor.
…We don’t do heart surgery when someone comes in with high cholesterol.
What are we doing to these people?”
Read more: http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/breast-cancer-awareness-story-asks--are-mammograms-necessary--194041170.html
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