Mammograms

RECENT POSTS

April 26, 2013 | 2:23 PM | By

Berkeley Journalist Takes On The ‘Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer’

The article asks: (Photo/Getty Images)

(Photo/Getty Images)

I first saw the article Thursday night on Facebook, then stayed up until midnight reading it. In a helluva story, Peggy Orenstein addresses The Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine.

Orenstein is uniquely situated to write an article she hopes will “help change the national conversation.” She’s been treated for breast cancer twice in the last 15 years, including a mastectomy last fall, and the Times Magazine — for which she writes regularly — is one of the most powerful publications in the world.

Orenstein was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997 after her doctor sent her for a screening mammography. “I used to believe a mammogram saved my life,” she writes as the opening line of her piece. Today, she’s not so sure.

As she writes in the Times:

Sixteen years later, my thinking has changed. As study after study revealed the limits of screening — and the dangers of overtreatment — a thought niggled at my consciousness. How much had my mammogram really mattered? Would the outcome have been the same Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Policy, Breast Cancer, Mammograms, Science
March 29, 2013 | 4:53 PM | By

California’s Breast Density Notification Law Goes Into Effect

(Photo: U.S. Navy)

(Photo: U.S. Navy)

As women are well aware, the purpose of a mammogram is to screen for cancer. What many women don’t know is that as part of the screening, radiologists also assess the level of density in a woman’s breast tissue.

Starting Monday, a new California law will require that doctors notify women if their breast tissue is dense. Dense breast tissue makes it harder to read mammograms and is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer.

Former state Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) introduced the law last year. It grew out of his concern that while doctors were aware of a patient’s breast density, the patient herself was not, preventing women from talking with their doctors about how they might want to address their potential increased risk. He wanted to change that.

“The fundamental premise of the legislation,” he said in a recent call with reporters, “is that absent this information, these conversations weren’t going to take place.”

Some background: breast tissue is graded from 1 (not dense) to 4 (extremely dense). The law requires that women graded either a 3 or a 4 be notified.

Here’s the specific notification required by the law:

Your mammogram shows that your breast tissue is dense. Dense breast tissue is common and is not abnormal. However, dense breast tissue can make it harder to evaluate the Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Policy, Tests & Treatments, Breast Cancer, Breast Density, Mammograms, Science
March 19, 2013 | 11:56 AM | By

Mammograms: Which Women? How Often?

(Photo: U.S. Navy)

(Photo: U.S. Navy)

As everybody knows by now, how frequently a woman should have a mammogram is a topic of hot debate in the U.S. In particular, women in their 40s have been troubled by recommendations almost four years ago from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that mammograms are not routinely recommended for them. Instead, the decision is an “individual one” that a woman can make, presumably in conversation with her doctor.

Now, a new study has a tailored recommendation. For women in their 40s with “extremely dense breasts,” annual screening will reduce their risk of being diagnosed with advanced stage breast cancer.

“There is this sub-group that is higher risk and has more aggressive tumors,” said lead researcher Karla Kerlikowske, an epidemiologist and biostatistician at UCSF. “Annual mammography is probably better for that group.”

To date, most recommendations have relied on one risk factor: age. A woman’s risk of breast cancer increases as she gets older. But there are other risk factors, too, like breast density. About 12 to 15 percent of women in their 40s have “extremely dense breasts.” Radiologists categorize breast density on a scale of 1 to 4, and a score of 4 is “extremely dense.”

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Tests & Treatments, You're the Boss, Breast Cancer, Mammograms, Mammography, Science
February 5, 2013 | 7:00 AM | By

Mammograms: Strong Evidence That Every Two Years Is Best Option For Older Women

(Photo: U.S. Navy)

(Photo: U.S. Navy)

A major new study has found that — in older women — mammograms done every two years were as effective as mammograms done annually and led to far fewer false positive results.

The study, published online Tuesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, included more than 140,000 women ages 66 to 89 from across the country.

Frequency of mammograms among women in their 40s and 50s has been the subject of intense debate for more than two decades, but this older group of women has been much less studied.

The women screened annually had a dramatically higher rate of false positives.
A team led by researchers at UC San Francisco sought to answer the question: among older women, if a woman is screened for breast cancer every two years, instead of every year, will a deadly cancer be missed?

“We found that there really was no difference,” Dejana Braithwaite, assistant professor of cancer epidemiology at UCSF and part of the research team, told me. ”The women who were screened every two years were not at a greater risk. They did not have a higher probability of being diagnosed with late stage breast cancer compared to those women who were screened every year.” Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Tests & Treatments, You're the Boss, Mammograms, Overtreatment, Unnecessary Care
May 1, 2012 | 3:29 PM | By

New Mammogram Research for Women in Their 40s

(Photo: U.S. Navy)

(Photo: U.S. Navy)

It’s hard to believe that a one in a hundred risk of something bad happening would generate so much heated debate, but that’s where we’re at when it comes to the question of mammograms for women in their 40s. Since breast cancer is a disease which risk increases with age, the clear cut off point for mammography has been age 50. Mammography will find cancer in women in their 40s, but will carry a much higher risk of false positives.

Specifically, a 40-year-old woman has a 1.5 percent chance of developing breast cancer at some point during her 40s. The 1-in-8 chance repeated so frequently is over a lifetime — up to age 80.

While mammography is the best tool we have in detecting breast cancer, it’s not a perfect test. Mammograms will pick up abnormalities that are not breast cancer. The problem is that doctors can’t say definitively these abnormalities are benign without further testing. Sometimes that means having an additional mammogram, sometimes women must then have a biopsy. In the meantime, many of these women are worrying. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Tests & Treatments, You're the Boss, Breast Cancer, Mammograms
February 10, 2012 | 4:35 PM | By

Did Susan G. Komen Do the Right Thing for the Wrong Reason?

(Brandi Korte: Flickr)

(Brandi Korte: Flickr)

While the widely regarded Cancer Letter is usually available only by subscription at a hefty $405 a year, the current issue is available for free. It looks at the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood. But the Cancer Letter is not concerned with the politics behind the story.

Instead, the Cancer Letter takes an extensive look at Planned Parenthood itself and why the organization is worried about screening mammography for the women it serves.

Remember, women who benefit most from mammography are post-menopausal, usually over age 50. Mammograms have been fiercely debated most for women in their 40′s. But no credible organization recommends screening mammograms for women younger than 40.

And how old is the population served by Planned Parenthood? Nearly 90 percent are 35 and younger, according to a Planned Parenthood spokesperson quoted in the article. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Policy, You're the Boss, Mammograms, Planned Parenthood, Susan G. Komen Foundation