A new study appears to confirm the worst doubts about the value of mammograms, suggesting that more than half of cancer diagnoses that come from the widely-used screenings are mistakes.
The study, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, concluded that while the advent of mammograms had led to a sharp increase in the number of small tumors detected among women, the majority of the newly-discovered tumors were benign.
Unfortunately, many women have been subjected to aggressive interventions in response to tumors that would likely not develop into life-threatening cancers, the study found.
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The early-detection mantra the medical community got behind in the 1970s and 1980s led to millions of tests on women over 35. That trend coincided with increased breast cancer survival rates. But the study authors attribute the improved outcomes to better treatments, rather than early detection.
"The reduction in breast cancer mortality after the implementation of screening mammography was predominantly the result of improved systemic therapy," they write.
While mammograms and other common cancer screenings, such as PSAs for prostate cancer, have come under increasing skepticism from a number of public health authorities, many doctors remain utterly committed to them.
A study earlier this year showed that many doctors still regularly perform tests on elderly Medicare patients. Established medical guidelines recommend against testing patients whose life expectancy will likely not be greatly changed by a cancer diagnosis but whose quality of life can dramatically decline as the result of interventions aimed at treating cancer.
And earlier this month, a committee of doctors put out a report recommending that insurers be required to cover the cost of a number of women's medical services for free, including mammograms for women starting at age 40. That recommendation was even more aggressive than current guidelines, which recommend testing only for women over 50 unless they have a family history of breast cancer.
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