Undergoing mammogram test does not actually help prevent the occurrence of breast cancer, a new study suggests.
Researchers writing their findings at the JAMA Internal Medicine checked cancer registry records of some 16 million women from 547 counties in 2000 across the United States to conclude that mammogram screening is not actually helpful in preventing breast cancer. Around 53,000 women were positive with breast cancer that year with a significant number of breast cancer diagnoses as aggressive.
Instead of preventing cancer-related deaths by detecting breast tumors at an early stage, mammograms only uncovered small tumors that are actually not dangerous if left untouched.
Researchers from the University of Washington School of Medicine, meanwhile, believed that confusion brought about by false results place both patients and healthcare workers in a difficult position.
"Treatment of an overdiagnosed tumor cannot provide benefit, but it can lead to harm. Over-diagnosis and overtreatment are now widely acknowledged to be an important harm of medical practice, including cancer screening," Joann G. Elmore and Ruth Etzioni wrote in an essay that accompanied the study.
"The clearest result of mammography screening is the diagnosis of additional small cancers," the researchers wrote, which suggests unnecessary over-diagnosis.
"The mortality results that we observed are far from definitive," Charles Harding, the study's lead author from Seattle, Washington, warned.
He also said that the "most dramatic finding of our study is the immediately evident - and substantial - evidence of breast cancer over-diagnosis" Harding told Reuters Health via email.
There are around 230,000 American women diagnosed with breast cancer, data from the National Cancer Institute revealed, and the figure keeps on rising. In the United States, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force advises average-risk women aged 70 to 74 to undergo mammogram screening at least once every two years. Those below 50 could get screened any time.
