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Mammography can lead to overdiagnosis

Does Mammography Sometimes Detect Too Much Breast Cancer? National Cancer Institute 20 Oct 09 The argument for screening women for breast cancer with mammography sounds simple: Mammography can detect cancers before they begin to cause symptoms. Clinical trials have shown that fewer women die of breast cancer when they are screened with mammography than when they are not.

But what if some of the very early stage breast cancers found by mammography are not destined to grow and become potentially lethal? Although the idea of a harmless cancer may seem counterintuitive, such cancers do exist.Some cancers never grow, or they grow so slowly that they never become clinically detectable.

Autopsy studies have found breast tumors in women between age 40 and 70 who died of unrelated causes. And a 2008 study made the provocative suggestion that some very early stage invasive breast tumors may regress spontaneously.
Overdiagnosis The identification of tumors that would never have become a clinical problem in the patient’s lifetime is known as overdiagnosis.  “With overdiagnosis, we often end up ‘curing’ cancers that didn’t need to be cured in the first place,” said Dr. Barry Kramer, director of the NIH Office of Disease Prevention and an expert on cancer screening.

NCI Cancer Bulletin for October 20, 2009 – National Cancer Institute

October 21, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, 2 WORLD, health | radiation, radioactive