In reply to the Tribune’s recent rather one-sided articles on mammography, I would like to submit the following: At age 51 I was diagnosed with breast cancer, an infiltrating lobular carcinoma, a type of cancer that represents about 10 percent of breast cancer cases and that does not produce a lump until much too late, if ever. I felt no breast lump; neither did a nurse practitioner nor two MDs. Not all infiltrating lobular carcinomas even show up on a mammogram, but I was fortunate that mine did. If it had not, I would probably not be here, because even though my tumor was only a little more than 1 centimeter, it had spread to a lymph node.
I have no family history of cancer and was not at especially high risk. I was not menopausal, had never been on hormone replacement therapy and had very dense breast tissue.
As I thought I was at low risk anyway, if those Swedish analyses had appeared back then, I probably would have decided that mammograms were a waste of time, and I would probably be dead.
I realize that one counterexample is not statistically relevant, but I am a living counterexample. Mammography isn’t perfect, but we still need it, in conjunction with breast self-exams and clinical exams, of course, because some breast cancers do not show up on mammograms but do form lumps early on.
