Change Ahead for Cervical Cancer Detection

[valleywine]

Source: cbs/ap




WASHINGTON, Nov. 20, 2009
Change Ahead for Cervical Cancer Detection

Women in their 20s Should Get Pap Smear Every Two Years, Not Annually, OB/GYN Organization Says


Learn about the most common cancers, who gets them and how they are treated.

(CBS/ AP) Most women in their 20s can have a Pap smear every two years instead of annually, say new guidelines that conclude that is enough to catch slow-growing cervical cancer.

The change by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists comes amid a completely separate debate over when regular mammograms to detect breast cancer should begin. The timing of the Pap guidelines is coincidence, said ACOG, which began reviewing its recommendations in late 2007 and published the update Friday in the journal Obstetrics&Gynecology.

The guidelines also say:

- Routine Paps should start at age 21. Previously, ACOG had urged a first Pap either within three years of first sexual intercourse or at age 21.

..................

These new guidelines might actually be more of a surprise to patients than to any gynecologist, especially since the changes have been evolving for over a decade. ACOG also added that cervical cancer rates have now fallen by over 50 percent in the past 30 years due to extensive pap testing, but these guidelines are actually closer to what The American Cancer Society recommends as well, CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton reports.

Paps can spot pre-cancerous changes in the cervix in time to prevent invasive cancer, and widespread use has halved cervical cancer rates in the U.S. in recent decades.


Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/20/health/main5720556.shtml?tag=stack

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Early and frequent screening prevents cancer. What next!!

Also see this thread if you have done so already:

Forum Name Editorials & Other Articles
Topic subject Is Womens' Health Care Under Attack?
Topic URL http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x497034#497034
497034, Is Womens' Health Care Under Attack?
Posted by BirminghamExaminer on Fri Nov-20-09 12:25 PM

Please read the entire editorial here. I pared the article down as much as I could here so you get the gist.

Women pay approximately 48% more for health care than do men in the United States. Even after paying high health care premiums to health insurance companies, women are sometimes denied coverage of pregnancy and childbirth care because it is deemed a pre-existing condition.

In the latest form of the health care reform bill, Bart Stupak, (D), MI., proposed an amendment that would exclude abortion care and treatment from health insurance for women, not just government funded health care such as Medicare or a public option but by any private health care insurance company as well. The Stupak amendment passed and if it isn't cut from the bill, women will find themselves with few choices.

Coming just days after the Stupak amendment was voted on and passed, a private sector task force commissioned by the Health and Human Services division of the U.S. government announced that it would recommend that physicians forego advising female patients under the age of 50 to have annual screening for breast cancer. The U.S. Preventative Service Task Force (USPSTF) panel of 16 included three private health insurance company representatives but no oncologists. The panel measured some number models and came up with the recommendation, ostensibly because of a higher number of 'false positives' among women under 50, causing anxiety and sometimes, unnecessary followups and testing.

It's widely known that the United States ranks far below other developed nations in health care costs, treatment results, and lifespan but one of the few areas in which the U.S. has excelled has been in preventing cancer deaths. It is unclear why the USPSTF has recommended suspension of annual mammograms for women under 50.

According to the Washington Post, "Many experts have begun to raise questions about routine screening methods, including the PSA blood test for prostate cancer and mammography, because they often trigger false alarms and catch precancerous growths and tiny tumors that would never become life-threatening but nonetheless prompt treatment."

But so far, the USPSTF hasn't recommended suspending testing for prostate cancer in men under the age of 75.

In August of 2008, the USPSTF made recommendations regarding prostate cancer screening that is very different than its recommendations for breast cancer screening.

So in 2008, the USPSTF in essence, recommends that physicians discuss the benefits and risks of prostate cancer screening with their male patients under the age of 75 and decide what action to take, if any.

Both prostate cancer and breast cancer screening effectiveness has been controversial in the last decade but the USPSTF appears to believe that physicians and their male patients can discuss the controversy and come to a decision about whether or not to be tested and how to be treated. Yet their recommendations that physicians forego recommending any sort of breast cancer screening to their female patients seem to indicate that the 15% of women between 40-49 whose deaths are prevented by screening aren't worth the bother of having to explain what the options, benefits and risks of breast cancer screening are to women.

[fascisthunter]

1. unbelieveable...

[still_one]

2. More bullshit, just like the mammogram study which was widely slamed, this one will be also

I have to believe that this is no coincidence that a healthcare bill in the works, and this garbage comes out

and as far as the so-called controversy with the PSA test, it is because people don't understand how it should be used. One value doesn't necessarily mean anything, however, a trend that rises to quickly does

However, if we got rid of all screening tests, stopped, yearly physcials, and never saw a doctor, even when sick, think how much money could be saved

[dgibby]

3. I'm beginning to smell a rat,

a right wing,health insurance industry,fat corporate rat. A rat that's giving the repukes and Dinos talking points to vote against health insurance reform.

Color me suspicious.:grr:

[Overseas]

5. I totally agree. This is private health insurance PR -- "See! They are rationing care!"

I agree with you. At first I wondered about that "space out the mammograms" news. And the immediate flurry of stories about angry survivors whose cancer was caught early by those mammograms.

Then we started hearing about rationing care to save money.

Now we've got a "space out the pap smears" story. What a coincidence! Another story about reducing health care services to women. That should stir things up. More rationing! Aha!

[truthisfreedom]

4. True, these changes are occurring at the same time as health care reform... but think.

Yes, it saves the insurance companies money if they only have to cover half as many paps, and they don't have to pay for doctors to teach women to detect lumps, and they don't have to pay for as many mammograms because nobody gets them until age 50 and they stop after age 74, and men don't get treated for prostate cancer as aggressively.

BUT, if it results in more cancers, it costs the insurance companies even more money. So why would they lower the bar on preventative medicine if it would reduce profits just a few years later?

My gut feeling is, this stuff is very unpalatable and it's easier to unroll on the public when everybody is trying to cut costs for a new health care overhaul, when everything is based on how much it will cost for the public option.

I personally believe that this stuff will be helpful, not hurtful. It seems from certain perspectives to fly in the face of logic, but I've listened to the arguments again and again and it's just sensible to me.

Think about this... what is so important about the arbitrary amount of time "annual" represents? How is cervical cancer tied to our orbit around the sun? Why not two orbits? It's a very slow-growing cancer, just like prostate cancers. Why not reduce the trauma to women and maybe, just maybe, more of them will go in for a pap on time since it doesn't have to occur as often?

Just sayin'.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

6. yes it does save insurance companies money!

[Rosa Luxemburg]

7. so what about fast growing cervical cancer?

[Hekate]

8. What? WHAT?!

:wtf:

I am speechless. These guidelines will be used by insurance corps to deny routine (and imo necessary) screenings for women.

:argh:

Hekate