Overkill by Paul Offit

Author:Paul Offit
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: MED112000, MED078000, SCI099000, MED029000, HEA039000, MED039000, MED076000, SOC057000, SCI075000, HEA009000
Publisher: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Published: 2020-06-01T16:00:00+00:00

FOR those trying to decide whether to undergo screening mammograms, here are the odds.

For every 1,000 women screened every two years, most will have a false-positive mammogram during the next ten years, 146 will have an unnecessary biopsy, 7 will see a fatal case of breast cancer prevented, and 19 will be diagnosed with a cancer that never would have killed them. Among the 19 per 1,000 who are overdiagnosed, 99 percent will have surgery, 70 percent radiation therapy, 70 percent hormone therapy, and 25 percent chemotherapy without benefit.

Because the use of screening mammograms to prevent breast cancer has both risks and benefits, the recommendations from various advisory groups for when or whether to get them are all over the map:

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and the American College of Physicians recommend mammography every two years for women ages fifty to seventy-four.

The American College of Radiology and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommend yearly mammograms for women starting at age forty without an upper age limit.

The American Cancer Society recommends yearly mammograms for women ages forty-five to fifty-four and biennial mammograms for women age fifty-five and older.

The Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care and the European Cancer Observatory recommend mammograms every two to three years for women between ages fifty and sixty-nine.

The Cochrane Collaborative and the Nordic Cochrane Collaborative don’t recommend mammograms, arguing that the risks outweigh the benefits. Similarly, independent expert groups in Switzerland and France have recommended that breast cancer screening programs should be stopped or substantially reduced.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.