Computer Aided Mammography
A study that was in the news last week after it was published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that expensive, high tech mammography machines didn’t help radiologists “find more tumors and significantly increased the number of false alarms.” I read about this study and the scrutiny these pieces of equipment are under in an article in The Washington Postthat highlights the debate about mammography screening in general. This whole issue begs the question: what is better, a false alarm from an imperfect screening measure (an area of the breast that look suspicious but in actuality, is not) or an undiagnosed cancer?
As someone who was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 35 at an early stage, I say the latter. I would rather go through a litany of tests and find out I didn’t have cancer then have cancer and not know about it.
Then Reuters releases this information today: women who experience a ‘false positive’ are more likely to do self-breast exams and more likely to return for subsequent mammograms. However, they experience higher levels of anxiety than they should have to when it comes to a routine screening procedure and that anxiety can have lasting effects. Hello? Anxiety? Imagine the anxiety of getting diagnosed with a breast cancer that had been growing in your body undetected and unbeknown to you for years and learning that had you been screened your cancer might have been detected earlier and you might have had a better chance to fight the disease and live if you had gotten regular mammograms? Is there really a comparison?
(Thanks to Soochal at Flickr for the beautiful photograph.)
April 13th, 2007 at 11:15 am
There is no comparison, there is no question. Mammograms save lives! I’m also pushing for MRI’s for high risk patients..my fight is still going on. Don’t know how much longer I want to really wait..I have no idea how fast ADH can grow..as eventually, it will turn into DCIS..
October 16th, 2007 at 12:25 am
i was pointed to your blog today. chal (in the picture) was re-admitted last week and remains in the hospital now. thankfully, bone marrow biopsy shows no cancer. i will pray the same for you and yours. be well.
-soochal