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What a difference six months — and a health-care overhaul proposal — can make! Just six months ago, the U.S Preventive Services Task Force, which works within the Department of Health and Human Services as a “best practice” panel on prevention, sounded a warning signal over a slight decline in annual mammograms among women in their 40s. In fact, they warned women of this age bracket that they could be risking their lives if they didn’t get the annual preventive exam (via HA reader Devil’s Advocate): The downward trend, however slight, has breast cancer experts worried. Mammograms can enable physicians...

For many women, getting a mammogram is already one of life's more stressful experiences. Now, women in their 40s have the added anxiety of trying to figure out if they should even be getting one at all. A government task force said Monday that most women don't need mammograms in their 40s and should get one every two years starting at 50 — a stunning reversal and a break with the American Cancer Society's long-standing position. What's more, the panel said breast self-exams do no good, and women shouldn't be taught to do them.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task force (whatever that is), in the Annals of Internal Medicine, yesterday advised women not to begin mammogram screenings for breast cancer until 50, and then conducting them only every other year and not annually, as had been recommended previously. It’s about time. But why the change? False positives Docs have finally woke up to the effects of false positives. Mammograms are far from perfect test instruments, and a false positive is when the mammogram says you have cancer when you truly do not. These happen all the time with mammograms, especially in younger women who...

Less Rigorous Guidelines for Breast Cancer ScreeningsFor years, women have been taught to perform regular breast self-exams and those 40 and older told to undergo annual mammograms to detect breast cancer, a disease that kills about 40,000 people in the U.S. every year. Now, new guidelines released by an influential government-funded authority on screening offer this message: never mind. The new U.S. Preventive Services Task Force guidelines, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, state that routine mammograms aren't necessary for women of average cancer risk in their 40s, and that women between 50 and 74 years old don't...

There is a reality radiologists have faced for several years: Mammography, performed and interpreted by experts, can not survive. It is a technology besieged by conglomerate forces that will drive it into extinction, with many other important procedures and technologies to follow. Radiologists see four major reasons for this destructive phenomenon: HMO’s, government regulations, special interest groups ( THE MAMMACTIVISTS) and trial lawyers. President Clinton’s overblown health care crisis and ill-conceived reform project of the early ‘90’s catalyzed the conversion of fee-based private health insurance into the HMO chimera we now face. Positioned as middlemen – with profits their sole...

<p>ST. PAUL, Minnesota (AP) -- A hospital apologized for a laboratory mistake that resulted in the amputation of a healthy woman's breasts after she was mistakenly told she had an aggressive form of cancer.</p> <p>Dr. Daniel Foley, medical director of United Hospital, told KARE-TV in the Twin Cities that the St. Paul hospital had made changes so "this kind of mixup would never happen again."</p>

I was getting my annual mammogram at the Hackensack University Medical Center today. The office was now called the "Betty Torricelli Institute for Breast Care." Her name had to have been added sometime during the last year because I know it had never been there before. I made a VERY large point to their management and public relations people at how odious it was to honor the criminal Senator, even if it was actually his mother. They acknowledged that the Torch had not paid money for this honor (as is customary for named buildings.) The p.r. person told me that...

Voyeur gets women to bare breasts for satellite....... (Filed: 28/06/2002) Four women have contacted police after being persuaded to stand topless in their windows or balconies so that a satellite could give them a mammogram. The women, aged between 19 and 45, living in the Algarve, southern Portugal, were all contacted by telephone by a woman claiming to be a doctor. She told them that a revolutionary method had been developed of conducting breast examinations by satellite. They were told that the consultation would be free if they followed instructions by stripping to the waist and standing in view of...