Mammograms have been touted as one of the effective measures of preventing and managing breast cancer. However, according to a recent U.S. study, that may not be entirely true.
For many years, experts have considered mammograms as the best way to catch malignant tumors. Thus, women who are at least 50 years old and considered to be "average risk" should undergo the test every 2 years until they are already 74 years old.
But when the researchers followed registry records of cancer cases among more than 500 counties in the United States, they discovered that the screening test doesn't control the death rate. Worse, many women tend to be exposed to unneeded surgeries and treatment as mammograms find tumors that may actually be benign or completely harmless in the first place.
For the study, researchers from two of the biggest universities in the country, Dartmouth and Harvard, followed around 16 million women with an average age of 40 years old and who had their screening tests obtained from 1998 to 2000.
After 2000, around 50,000 of these women eventually developed breast cancer. Within a decade, at least 15% of these diagnosed women succumbed to the disease.
Meanwhile, the screening rate for breast cancer was as high as 78%. This simply means that those counties who had been aggressive with the screening should have a much lower death rate from the disease.
Although the study didn't mention whether the death rates were higher in these counties, it also stressed that the researchers couldn't find any correlation. In other words, the screening tests didn't also lower the deaths.
Mammograms, however, were able to catch very small tumors, which may be early-stage cancers. But they may not work for those who already have more advanced breast cancers simply because large tumors tend to be more difficult to expose.
