Please note that apart from smoking, there is not much one can do about prevention of Cancer.
Even Smoking is linked to Cancer by the logic that the percentage of people who have cancer are smokers, are higher than those who do not smoke.
Strictly speaking in logical terms this is not correct.
Any way this is the other side of the problem.
Following is another view point on efficacy of mammography.
Story:
These six independent groups — located at academic medical centers — were comprised of researchers from CISNET, the National Cancer Institute-funded Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network. Each group used their own model to examine 20 screening strategies with different starting and stopping ages and intervals. Modeling estimates the lifetime impact (outcomes including benefits and harms) of breast cancer screening mammography.
Their findings were remarkably consistent. In the Times article, Donald A. Berry, a statistician at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and head of one of the modeling groups says, “The models were the only way to answer questions like how much extra benefit do women get if they are screened every year.”
‘We said, essentially with one voice, very little,” Dr. Berry said. “So little as to make the harms of additional screening come screaming to the top.”
In fact, the CISNET analysis showed that screening every other year in women over 50 maintains almost all of the benefit of annual screening with only half the number of false-positives.
To summarize their other findings, the task force panel determined that the “harms” or risks of yearly mammography screening for women under 50 outweighed its benefits. These risks include anxiety, false positives that lead to surgical biopsies and over-diagnosis (and over-treatment) of precancerous lesions that would never progress or might disappear on their own. The group found that in women 40-49, 1,904 women must be screened for 10 years before one cancer death is prevented. That ratio drops to 1 death prevented for 1,300 women age 50-59 screened, and 1 for 377 for women 60 to 69 years old.
I’ve written about the overuse of mammography and the many studies that back up the task force’s recommendations here and here in previous posts. It’s an issue that has gained traction in recent months, and despite rejection of the new recommendations by some prominent cancer groups, there are others, like the National Breast Cancer Coalition, who support them — or at least see the guidelines as important tools for helping women make informed decisions about their care. They are too important to be shrugged off as outliers.
The massive campaign to screen early and screen regularly has become so much a part of our culture that it is very difficult to accept an alternative view. Change will not come easily — and by necessity, it must be gradual. Women have been told for the last 20 years that they should have yearly mammograms starting at age 40. They have been told by countless magazine articles and public health campaigns to conduct self-exams in the shower — another screening technique the Preventative Task Force no longer recommends.
Through all of these entreaties — along with the powerful anecdotes from survivors who credit mammography with saving their lives — women have been made to believe that screening is the same as prevention. Those ideas are hard to dislodge, says Nancy Berlinger, a research scholar at The Hastings Center who has written about comparative effectiveness studies and cancer treatment. “Apart from not smoking, there are not a lot of things you can do to prevent cancer. The idea of a test like mammography as a kind of safety belt, something that provides personal protection against cancer, is very strong.” The worry, she says, is that if you take away mammograms, “you leave nothing but fear in its place.
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/144053/do_yearly_mammograms_save_women’s_lives/
You must be logged in to post a comment.