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Call them “breast-obsessed” if you like, but more than 3500 years ago, Egyptian physicians documented breast cancer on papyri that survive to this day. Some authorities claim that these documents could date back much earlier than that. A key entry describes “bulging tumors of the breast that have no cure.” From Hippocrates on, causes of the disease were proffered by the leading minds of the day. These would include excess of black bile; lack of sexual activity; overly vigorous sexual activity; depression; childlessness, and sedentary lifestyle. Famed French physician Henri Le Dran was among the first to advocate surgical removal...

Late last year, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force changed their book of evidence-based guidelines for mammography screening in a way that caused significant disagreement in the medical community. The task force recommended against routine mammography screening for women before age 50 years and suggested that this breast cancer screening end at age 74 years. The guidelines also recommended changing the screening interval from one year to two years. Now, new data from a large Swedish study show that mammography screening in women aged 40 to 49 years results in a much greater reduction in mortality from breast cancer than...

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...

The flap over breast cancer screening has provided a fascinating insight into the political future of ObamaCare. Specifically, the political left supports such medical rationing even as it disavows that any such thing is happening. No sooner had the Health and Human Services Department's U.S. Preventative Services Task Force recommended against mammography for women under 50 than Secretary Kathleen Sebelius rushed to say don't worry. The decision had "caused a great deal of confusion and worry among women," she said, promising that no policies would change. New Jersey's Frank Pallone vowed to hold hearings, and Senator Dick Durbin leveled the...

SAN FRANCISCO — Only 21% of Massachusetts women older than age 40 years were not in mammographic screening programs. Yet unscreened women accounted for 75% of the breast cancer deaths in an analysis of data on 6,997 invasive breast cancers diagnosed in 1990-1999 and followed through 2007. “The most effective method for women to avoid death from breast cancer is to have regular mammographic screening,” Dr. Blake Cady said at a breast cancer symposium sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, where he presented the data. Extrapolation from the study's results suggests that for the projected 192,370 women nationwide...

Two reports being published today call for greatly expanded use of M.R.I. scans in women who have breast cancer or are at high risk for it. The recommendations do not apply to most healthy women, who have only an average risk of developing the disease. Even so, the new advice could add a million or more women a year to those who need breast magnetic resonance imaging — a demand that radiologists are not yet equipped to meet, researchers say. The scans require special equipment, software and trained radiologists to read the results, and may not be available outside big...

CHICAGO, Sept 14 - Women with a high genetic risk of breast cancer run a better chance of having it detected with magnetic resonance imaging than with mammography or other methods, a new study has found. The kind of breast cancer involved is caused by mutations of the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2, an occurrence believed responsible for 5 percent to 10 percent of all breast cancer cases. Women with the mutations, which can be detected through blood tests, have a significantly higher risk of breast cancer. The research, being published in this week's issue of The Journal of the American...

A Dutch study published this week in The New England Journal of Medicine produced the strongest evidence yet that magnetic resonance imaging can detect breast cancer in women at high risk of the disease far better than standard mammography. The finding is bound to accelerate the use of M.R.I. in this high-risk group, but women facing only a normal risk of breast cancer have no good reason to request costly M.R.I. scans, which yield many false alarms. The Dutch study - the largest ever conducted on the subject - searched for cancer in some 1,900 women with a high or...

LONDON (Reuters) - A new screening technique being developed by scientists in England may help turn the tables on breast cancer by identifying tumors far earlier. Breast cancer is one of the biggest killers of women across the world, accounting for more than 43,000 deaths a year in the United States and 13,000 in Britain alone. As with all cancers, early detection is key to enhanced survival rates. Currently mammograms can only detect tumors when they have grown to between 10 and 12 millimeters across, but New Scientist magazine reported that a technique being developed at University College London can...