Teresa Heinz undergoes surgery for breast cancer

Teresa Heinz, 71, the widow of Sen. John Heinz, heir to the Heinz ketchup fortune, is reportedly receiving treatments for her breast cancer.

Heinz, wife of Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, underwent lumpectomies on both breasts at Massachusetts General Hospital in early October after she found out that she had cancer in her left breast.

Heinz will receive radiotherapy in January 2010.  But she has not decided whether she is going to undergo any chemotherapy even though the treatment doctors claim would raise her survival odds to 99 percent, given her age and the side effects of the treatment.

Breast cancer is diagnosed in more than 170,000 women each year in the United States and the disease kills about 50,000 annually.

Women in the United States where the cancer incidence is much higher than poor countries are advised to receive the mammogram screening starting age 40. But the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended last month that women should start receiving this screening at age 50 to reduce both the medical cost and side effects of the procedure.

Medical groups and many breast cancer survivors oppose the recommendations saying mammogram screenings save life.

Studies have shown that mammogram screenings can find most cases of breast cancer for sure. But there are some problems.  First, the procedure may result in false negative cases. Second, it can result in false positive cases which will lead to further biopsies and damaging breast tissue.  Third, the procedure cannot reduce the cancer mortality as the current treatments can't help much in many cases of aggressive breast cancer and patients die no matter how early the disease is found.

By Jimmy Downs