The Dangers and Unreliability of Mammograms

[harvey007]

http://www.preventcancer.com/patients/mammography/dangers.htm

http://www.preventcancer.com/patients/mammography/unreliability.htm

http://www.preventcancer.com/patients/mammography/failures.htm

[Desertrose]

1. How about a bit more in the OP

for those who don't have time to click the links right now?

:)

[leftyladyfrommo]

2. How many women are living with what they think is cancer when

it is really one of the types of cancers that never amount to anything?

I think mammography may just be another medical procedure foisted off on women. It certainly has made a lot of money for a lot of people over the years.

[Lars39]

3. Sure as hell beats 27 radiation treatments after 8 chemo treatments

and 1 breast removal.

[corpseratemedia]

7. +2

for the two times my mother beat invasive breast cancer, the first time an agressive form encapsulated in a less aggressive one, the second had spead to the lymph nodes.

little tiny specks on mammograms that two good radiologists decided to pay attention to.

once when my mother was under 45.

[Lars39]

8. I was diagnosed at 42.

I don't like to rush whoever reads my films at all. :D

[ProdigalJunkMail]

4. saved my mother-in-law...

i think that she is thankful for that exam at 43...

sP

[liberal_at_heart]

5. I have had an unnecessary breast biopsy and had an ovary removed that was not cancerous

The breast biopsy was painful. I tell myself I was doing what I had to do but I do wish I still had my ovary. Unfortunately there is no way for them to tell if an ovarian mass in cancerous until they take it out and send it to pathology. I'm in my early thirties and have had preventative mastectomies and had one ovary removed because they saw a mass and couldn't tell what it was without taking it out. Like I said I try to tell myself I am doing what I have to do but I feel like a butchered piece of meat. I am grateful to be cancer free and alive. My mother and grandmother both died in their early thirties due to breast cancer. I have a mutated gene that puts me at higher risk for breast and ovarian cancer. We need better tests. The so called experts keep telling us the reason we have such expensive healthcare costs is because we have some of the most advanced technologies and medicines and treatments in the world. Well we still live in the Dark Ages when it comes to detecting cancer.

[Lance_Boyle]

6. Don't post science here - you'll be shouted down

by those who are religiously certain their anecdotes trump it.

[Robyn66]

9. I'm not going there again but

I'm 43 and alive because of a mammogram if I waited until I was 50, I wouldn't be. I don't know how many dead women make a test necessary in your book but frankly I can't possibly understand this point of view. Maybe its just because cancer has never touched your life.


Of all those links I think this is the real reason why they want women under 50 to stop getting mammograms.

COSTS OF SCREENING
The dangers and unreliability of mammography screening are compounded by its growing and inflationary costs; Medicare and insurance average costs are $70 and $125, respectively. Inadequate Medicare reimbursement rates are now prompting fewer hospitals and clinics to offer mammograms, and deterring young doctors from becoming radiologists. Accordingly, Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) are introducing legislation to raise Medicare reimbursement to $100 (42).

If all U. S. premenopausal women, about 20 million according to the Census Bureau, submitted to annual mammograms, minimal annual costs would be $2.5 billion (4). These costs would be increased to $10 billion, about 5 percent of the $200 billion 2001 Medicare budget, if all postmenopausal women were also screened annually, or about 14 percent of the estimated Medicare spending on prescription drugs. Such costs will further increase some fourfold if the industry, enthusiastically supported by radiologists, succeeds in its efforts to replace film machines, costing about $100,000, with the latest high-tech digital machines, approved by the FDA in November 2000, costing about $400,000. Screening mammography thus poses major threats to the financially strained Medicare system. Inflationary costs apart, there is no evidence of the greater effectiveness of digital than film mammography (43), as confirmed by a study reported at the November 2000 annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (44). In fact, digital mammography is likely to result in the increased diagnosis of ductal carcinoma-in-sutu (DCIS).