To a woman undergoing mammographic screening, the finding of a breast cancer may seem like a death sentence. But she should “stop, look and listen.”
She should stop to realize that she is not in any immediate danger. She has ample time to get the facts–rather than just doctors’ opinions–about her disease.
She should look at the new study in the Sept. 20 Journal of the National Cancer Institute, which is based on almost 40,000 Canadian women who were followed for more than 13 years. This study provides the best available facts because the women were randomly assigned to two groups, one that had physical examinations only and the second that had physical examinations plus mammography. The two main findings of this study were that screening by mammography enabled treatment to start 2.1 years earlier on average, and the earlier detection did not reduce the risk of dying from breast cancer. At the end of 13 years there were 88 breast-cancer deaths in the mammography group and 90 deaths in the other group. Postponing decisions on treatment for two years had done no harm to the women.
Hence, when a woman is told her mammography picked up a breast cancer, she should listen carefully to what her doctors say. If they tell her she must immediately rush into treatment (especially if they recommend the use of radiation and/or chemotherapy as an adjuvant to minimal surgery, such as a lumpectomy), then she should make one immediate decision–she should start looking around for other doctors who are up-to-date on new research studies on mammographic screening and will not recommend invasive treatments that are useless and that may do her serious harm.
