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Cancer screening: Doing more harm than good?

Cancer screening: Doing more harm than good?What you need to know before your next mammogram or colonoscopy

msnbc  By Shannon Brownlee

Reader’s Digest

TODAY

updated 10:12 a.m. ET March 12, 2009 – “…………….It’s hard to believe, but some researchers wouldn’t call Bull lucky at all. They say that yearly mammograms are not nearly as effective at reducing the risk of dying of breast cancer as most women think, and that mammography leads many women to get unnecessary treatment — especially those diagnosed with DCIS. The problem is bigger than just mammography:……………………………..screening tests pick up many small cancers that would never have caused any symptoms. “Screening for cancer means that tens of thousands of patients who never would have become sick are diagnosed with this disease,” says H. Gilbert Welch, MD, codirector of the Outcomes Group at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White River Junction, Vermont, and a leading expert in cancer screening. “Once they’re diagnosed, almost everybody gets treated — and we know that treatment can cause harm.”……………………The flip side of this problem is that many screening tests do a great job at catching cancers that would never have caused problems and could simply have been left alone.

Cancer screening: Doing more harm than good? – TODAY Health- msnbc.com

March 13, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, environment