The question all women should be asking: “What type of breast cancer screening is most effective AND least harmful?”

What just happened?

I’ve told you about my yearly routine with my doctor. He knows I refuse to get a mammogram. But he always writes the prescription for the imaging appointment anyway. I accept it without complaint. And I throw it away when I get home.

Then we do it all again next time.

For me, there’s no mammogram “controversy.” There’s not even a question. Case closed.

But for my doctor — and mainstream medicine — the controversy goes on. The Wall St. Journal recently trotted it out again with an article titled, “Should All Women Over 40 Get Annual Mammograms?”

Here’s the problem… They’re seriously misleading women by asking the wrong question.

The “lifesaver” deception

WSJ sets up the mammogram question with a she-said/he-said response from two experts.

The “She” expert is director of breast radiation oncology at a medical center. So of course she says, “Yes,” to annual mammograms. Duh! It’s like asking an insurance salesman if you should buy insurance.

The “He” expert with the “No” answer is a Dartmouth professor of health policy. He demolishes the “lifesaver” reputation of mammograms by crunching some numbers.

If 2,000 women over age 50 are screened every year for a decade, approximately one breast cancer death will be avoided. Meanwhile, hundreds of these women will get false positive results. That means unnecessary biopsies, surgeries and other treatments. Also, many women will be overdiagnosed and treated for cancers that are not life threatening.

That’s his basic case. And it’s a good one. But he completely ignores the danger lurking in a decade of unnecessary radiation exposure. And he doesn’t even mention breast compression. (If he were a woman, I’ve got a feeling he might have included that.)

As I’ve mentioned many times, breast compression is more than just a discomfort issue. It can prompt the growth of existing tumors.

But here’s the real problem… WSJ is asking the wrong question

They should be asking: “What type of breast cancer screening is most effective AND least harmful?”

But they can’t ask that. If they do, they’ll reveal mammography as the outmoded, dangerous dinosaur that it is.

Last year I told you about Automated Breast Ultrasound. Recently, the FDA approved ABUS for screening dense breasts. And that’s our first clue that something huge just happened.

ABUS is better than mammography at spotting tumors in dense breast tissue. But I suspect the FDA is fully aware that ABUS effectively screens ALL breast types. The big difference is that ABUS doesn’t put women in danger.

ABUS doesn’t use radiation. There’s no breast compression. And with a new technique called elastography, ultrasound technicians can accurately spot malignant tumors. That significantly reduces the number of false positives. And that means fewer unnecessary follow up procedures.

So don’t fall for the mammogram “controversy.” It’s not a controversy. Mammography is done. It’s already a relic from a bygone era.

Sources:
“Should All Women Over 40 Get Annual Mammograms?” Marisa Weiss, Gilbert Welch, The Wall St. Journal, 2/18/13, wsj.com