Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Wiki Wiki

From the Wikipedia article on screening mammography.

Critique of screening mammography

The use of mammography as a screening tool for the detection of early breast cancer continues to be debated. Critics point out that a large number of women need to be screened to find cancer. Keen and Keen indicated that repeated mammography starting at age 50 saves about 1.8 lives over 15 years for every 1,000 women screened.[17] This result has to be seen against the negatives of errors in diagnosis, overtreatment, and radiation exposure. Countercritics argue that the benefit is greater. The Cochrane analysis of screening indicates that it is "not clear whether screening does more good than harm". According to their analysis one in 2,000 women will have her life prolonged by 10 years of screening, however, another 10 healthy women will undergo unnecessary breast cancer treatment.[18] Newman points out that screening mammography does not reduce death overall, but causes significant harm by inflicting cancer scare and unnecessary surgical interventions.[19] Finally, a significant recent article points out that a successful screening program should result in an increase in the number of early breast cancers, followed by a decrease in the number of late-stage cancers. However this is not happening with current mammography screening. [20]



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammography

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