Mammograms: Not so beneficial after all?

Mammograms: Not so beneficial after all?

Mammograms may not provide nearly as much benefit as previously thought, according to a study published today in The New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers analyzed data from all 40,075 Norwegian women who were diagnosed with breast cancer in the 10 years before and after 1996, when Norway began offering mammograms to women ages 50 to 69. They found that mammograms, combined with modern treatment, reduced the death rate by 10 percent. The data stunned researchers, who had expected mammograms to reduce the breast cancer rate by about a third, The New York Timesreports.

And, like prostate cancer screening, mammograms can cause patients unnecessary anguish and pointless medical treatment. Screening 2,500 50-year-olds for a decade would result in 1,000 of them having to endure follow-up mammograms, 500 receiving needless biopsies and five to 15 women being treated for slow-growing cancers they never would have noticed. Just one woman’s life would be saved.

“But I don’t think that the real take-home message from this study is not to have a mammogram,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “Screening does save lives, it does prevent breast cancer deaths, it’s just not as powerful a tool as we thought.”

“This is never going to change practice, because one of the most common causes of malpractice lawsuits is failure to diagnose breast cancer,” says ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross. “The mere decrease in the actual benefit of screening mammography — if confirmed in subsequent studies — is not going to result in doctors advising women not to have a mammogram.”