Benefits of mammograms overestimated

Monday April 6, 2009 (foodconsumer.org) -- Every year, thousands of women over fifty receive yearly mammograms to determine whether or not they have breast cancer. If you surveyed the average woman in this age category in the United States, she would likely tell you that she’s either had a baseline mammogram, or she intends to do so in the not-too-distant future.

No surprise there. However, what will likely cause quite a stir among cancer research pundits is a new study released by two brothers, Drs. James and John Keen. John (a radiologist at Cook County Medical Clinic) and James (an epidemiologist at the University of Nebraska) have reported in the BioMed Central Journal BMC Med Informatics and Decision Making that the general public is overestimating the value of mammography, in terms of lives saved.

In fact, the Keen doctors assert that only 5% of administered mammograms actually save lives (the American Cancer Society says it’s 15 percent).

While the Drs. Keen do not argue that mammograms have benefits, they are concerned that the public doesn’t realize what they are getting for their hard won insurance dollar. And, in terms of false positives, the intangible costs of having to wait for the results of follow up biopsies and ultrasounds can be even greater than the monetary outlay.

The Drs. go further by saying that in order to save one life over the course of fifteen years, 2970 women must be screened. In answer to these stats, Dr. Robert Smith, director of cancer screening of the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, says that only 465 women need to be tested to result in one woman being saved over the course of twenty years.

Whatever the true statistic may turn out to be, no one disputes that mammograms are beneficial. And, for women who are aware that 500,000 lives are lost every year due to breast cancer, no amount of money is too much to pay for a little reassurance.

(By Rachel Stockton, and edited by Heather Kelley)