Posted on 12/01/2009 10:40:26 PM PST by neverdem
For young women who have a high risk of breast cancer because of genetic mutations or family history, the radiation from yearly mammograms may make the risk even higher, researchers reported at a radiology conference on Monday.
The report is particularly troubling because it suggests that the very women who are told they need mammograms most may also be the most vulnerable to harm from them. Doctors routinely urge high-risk women to have mammograms earlier in life and more often than women judged to be at average risk.
Researchers caution that the new report is not conclusive, and that the issue needs more study.
High doses of radiation can increase the risk of breast cancer, especially in young women, but mammography uses a low dose. The American Cancer Society and many breast cancer experts say the benefits of screening far outweigh any theoretical risk from the radiation.
But the new findings will probably fuel the debate that was ignited by a recent article in The Journal of the American Medical Association questioning the value of breast cancer screening and a report by a government task force suggesting that most women could start having mammograms later in life and repeat them less often than had generally been recommended.
The latest findings come not from new research, but from an analysis that pooled the data from six earlier studies involving about 5,000 high-risk women in the United States and Europe, some who had breast cancer and some who did not. Their median age was 45.
Looking back at their medical histories, researchers found that those women who had had mammograms or chest X-rays (which use a lower radiation dose than mammography) were more likely to have breast cancer...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
press release: Mammography may increase breast cancer risk in some high-risk women
In other words: get used to less care, citizen.
Article date: 2001/04/24
Organized mammographic screening substantially reduces breast cancer mortality by 63%, according to a study presented yesterday by Robert A. Smith, PhD, director of cancer screening for the American Cancer Society at the ACS’ 43rd Science Writers Seminar in Dana Point, California.
That’s a much more significant impact than the 30% rate that has previously been attributed to mammography, says Smith, co-author of the long-range study that will publish its latest findings in the May 1, 2001 issue of Cancer. Even more deaths can be prevented if women get mammograms every year, as the ACS recommends for all women age 40 and older, Smith urges.
The Swedish study measured an organized program in which all the women in two counties between the ages of 40 and 69 received an invitation every two years to have a free mammogram. Between 1988 and 1996, among the women who actually got a mammogram, the breast cancer mortality rate declined by 63%.
Odd thing that these proactive, preventative measures were never disputed before the health care bill. In fact, they were heavily endorsed with not one contrary ‘study’ ever cited. Now these ‘studies’ are amazingly surfacing. No doubt within the next few months, we will hear of ‘studies’ discouraging colonoscopies, PSA tests, cholesterol and diabetes tests before the age of 65.
I read the headline and knew exactly what was going on... pure evil! Yes, evil!
convenient timing on this study.
why cant they do MRI instead of X-ray?
Thermography is the way to go.
I would wager that these knuckleheads confuse correlation with causation, a common (but stupid) mistake.
If women who are at high risk of getting cancer are urged to get mammograms, then the authors of this study have the causality backwards.
It is the risk of cancer that causes mammograms, not the other way around.
I am an academic. I can not exaggerate how often this mistake is made, even though graduate students in every discipline are counseled not to screw this up. My sense is that it is just tooooo tempting.
These drooling cretins don’t know of what they speak. Transoceanic flights expose passengers and crew to radiation equivalent to a CT scan with each trip. If exposure to such radiation were anything more than a theoretical hazard, we would see breast cancer and leukemia in far higher proportions among flight attendants than among the general population of women.
We don’t. Explain that geniuses!
Hispanic women and to a lesser degree Black women have
almost half the risk of incidence of breast carcinoma
that white women do from ages 40 to 50.
Most interestingly, white women had been doing well
by curative treatment. They were being cured. That is not to be any longer.
Radiation is radiation, so this sentence is gibberish. It is russian roulette with more or fewer of the chambers loaded. If an electron hits the cell nucleus you are in trouble, whether the radiation dose was high or low.
The mammaography recommendations should not be thought of in the same way as the pap smear recommendations, which are risk-free. The lowest age for cervical cancer used to be 26; it is now well down into the teens, because of earlier sex. Two totally different health issues.
The pap smear is risk-free, in other words. The pap smear recommendations are totally wrong, whereas the mammography recommendations have some food for thought.
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