Winter Maladies: Natural Approaches
June Russell's Health Facts
Caveats: Mammography
Modern medicine is full of uncertainty, and mammography has been widely accepted as the best way to spot breast abnormalities before they grow into deadly tumors. However, the National Cancer Institute advisory panel concluded there is insufficient evidence to prove that mammography reduces breast cancer deaths. Scientists have debated the risk of radiation exposure but they were confident that early detection saved lives, and for years women have taken for granted that mammograms had saved their lives, or would.
Every woman who gets a yearly mammogram through her fifties has a 50 percent chance of receiving at least one false-positive reading, said Mary Ann Napoli, head of the New York-based Center for Medical Consumers. in addition to anxiety and expense, many will undergo unnecessary procedures - - from a simple needle biopsy to a mastectomy. Some experts say the risks of mammography may outweigh the benefits. "You may end up with a lot of collateral damage to women who did not have invasive cancer." Peter Petrucci, a Washington breast cancer surgeon, acknowledged that legal and economic pressures - - and the difficulties in reading some X-rays - - can influence a course of treatment. "I see mammography overread because of concerns about liability, and when in doubt, some radiologists err in favor of recommending surgery for a mysterious mark on the film," he said. Abnormalities on the X-ray could be benign, and in instances where the tumor is malignant, modern therapies - - not early detection - - may make the difference in mortality. ("Mammography Review Shatters The Status Quo," HealthWorld online, Feb. 2002)
The percent of women who took tamoxifen and got breast cancer was less than
2 percent, the women who took a placebo and got breast cancer was less than 3 percent. So the headlines state "Tamoxifen Cuts Breast Cancer Risk by 50 percent in Healthy Women!" The real difference was only 1 percent. (Dr. William Douglass, "Real Health," July 2002)