Breast cancer screening: changing the guidelines

More than eight out of ten women say the new breast cancer screening procedural recommendations seem unsafe. In fact they are not, but due to aggressive public relations campaigns on behalf of preventing the disease, women aren’t going to easily back off on their preventive routine. Underscoring this is the general misunderstanding of how vulnerable the average woman is to getting the disease. On average, women believe there is a 37% chance of getting breast cancer. Really it’s 12%.

“Indeed, they have been exposed to consistent an high profile media campaigns, endorsed by medicine and a variety of interest groups, that have indoctrinated them into the concepts that mammograms lead to early detection and early detection saves lives,” this from the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

New guidelines ask that women get routine mammograms after 50 and get them every two years. This is quite different from the previous guidelines which stated annual exams at 40 plus. Still, for women with a history of the disease, any recommendation from her doctor would trump the guidelines.

For some women mammograms are stressful and painful experiences. There are plenty of false alarms too, sometimes leading to painful and unnecessary biopsies. Then there is the radiation exposure.

Dr. Michael LeFevre, of the US Preventive Services Task Force, believes that some advocacy groups have given women an unrealistic perception of of how common breast cancer is and the helpfulness of screening.

Elizabeth Thompson president of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure advocacy group shot back, “I don’t think today that we have fear-mongering when one in three women will be diagnosed with (any form of) cancer in their lifetime ad one in two men.”

So talk to you doctor. Do what’s right for you.

Source: American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Reuters