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Disturbing New Study Suggests Mammograms Barely Help, Possibly Hurt

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A large Danish study reveals mammograms do not appear to be helpful in preventing breast cancer deaths. The study further suggests that the screenings might actually do more harm than good.

The study, which was published in Annals of Internal Medicine, looked at nearly 1.5 million women between the ages of 35 to 84 during the 30-year period between 1980 to 2010. Researchers compared women who got regular mammograms to ones who didn't.

The scientists discovered that about a third of all cancer diagnoses that came from spotting images on mammograms would never have caused a health problem after all. In other words, mammograms detected tumors that would have grown so slowly they wouldn't have posed a problem, or would have never grown at all. Some would even have decreased in size. That means a large number of breast cancers were overdiagnosed and those women went through a possibly harmful experience for nothing.

One of the study authors, Karsten Juhl Jorgensen, M.D. said, "These women are unnecessarily treated with therapies, including surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, that have adverse effects."

To make matters worse, while insignificant tumors were detected and needlessly treated, it appears mammograms did not detect the deadliest ones. "Screening isn't picking up the cancer it's supposed to pick up," Jorgensen told Time, adding, "If you screen every year or once every second year, the really aggressive cancers are so fast growing that they go through the screen-detectable stages too fast for screening to pick up. They pop up between screening rounds."

As a result of this study and similar ones suggesting mammograms might lead to overdiagnoses of breast cancer and consequently unnecessary treatment for it, doctors and patients alike are confused about the worth of mammograms and the best way to evaluate the results from them. 

Some health experts say a new, different type of early detection needs to be developed to replace the mammogram.

Until that time, however, there is some good news. Fewer women are dying from aggressive breast cancer than in years past. That decrease isn't due necessarily to early detection, but rather improved treatments. 
 

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