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What if breast cancer screenings were not as valuable as we thought?, asks a new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine published Monday, October 24.
According to this study out of Dartmouth, only 3-13% of women were actually aided by mammograms. This is out of the 60% of women with breast cancer who detected it with screening. In other words, only 4,000-18,000 women per year are helped by the exam out of 230,000 diagnosed with breast cancer and 39 million who received a mammogram. The results were obtained by comparing data on women's 10-year risk of developing the disease and their 20-year risk of death.
While the real numbers should not be brushed aside, the study is focused on the miniscule percentages. They note the four kinds of breast cancers, one of which represents the women helped. Some cancers grow slowly and are normally identified and treated without mammograms. Others are malignant no matter what is done. Still others are not deadly. (Especially for this latter cancer, overdiagnosis becomes both a health and financial burden.)
Finally, some cancers are fatal unless detected at just the right moment by mammogram. This is the demographic that gives mammograms their reputation but it is a rare breed and is becoming more rare as new technologies save more women without needing a mammogram.
Researchers realize that this is a new and counterintuitive way of thinking about the disease but the numbers seem to suggest to them that millions spent on awareness campaigns and billions on screenings may be put to better use in innovating cancer prevention and treatment for the most aggressive of cancers.
Comment:
If you ask any cancer patient whether they should have waited for their cancer to arrive and then aggressively treated it or would have preferred to monitor for signs of the early stages of cancer, what do you think they're going to say? I believe that 100% of cancer patients will opt for early diagnosis and treatment. Let's focus on early detection and treatment and at the same time have the scientists and researchers look for that miraculous breakthrough we all want.
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