Mammography false alarms linked with later tumor risk
The American Cancer Society recommends breast cancer screenings for
women who are in good health starting at age 40. But, a growing number
of researchers have questioned the benefits of annual mammograms since
2009 when the United States Preventive Services Task Force first
recommended that screening be done every two years and be generally
restricted to women aged 50 to 74.
Now, a new study shows women with mammograms that produce false
positives have a heightened risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer
years later, but the reason why this is–is uncertain.
An increased risk of breast cancer among women with false positive
mammograms has been reported before. The new sturdy attempts to estimate
the extra risk while taking into consideration that doctors may have
missed the cancer in the previous diagnosis. According to the lead
author in the new study, physician mistakes regarding missing cancers
are only is a small percentage of the increased risk.
A mammogram is considered false positive when it suggests possible
breast cancer but additional screenings or a biopsy fails to find it.
The increased risk of breast cancer occurring, does not explain most of
false-positive mammograms. Radiologists reread the original mammograms
and found that doctors had actually missed the cancer in 72 of the 295
women, for a false-negative rate of 1.5 percent. Even after taking those
missed cancers into account, however, the researchers found that women
with false-positive mammograms were still 27 percent more likely to be
diagnosed with breast cancer years later, compared to women with only
negative test results.
The risk was slightly higher in women who had surgical biopsies that
turned out to be negative. The risk of a false-positive test over 10
mammograms ranges from 58 percent to 77 percent in the U.S.
There are those that wonder if there is an inherent biology of the
breast makes it suspicious and it puts a woman at higher risk, but no
one knows for sure.
Should women who get false-positive mammograms be followed more
closely by their doctors, or if false-positive patients should be
screened differently.
Some now believe that the excess rate of breast cancer among women
who have had false-positive mammograms points to the need to personalize
screening programs for women.
A risk calculator app, to guide women in deciding how often to get
mammograms, is being developed at the University of California. The
calculator considers a range of factors, including age, race, previous
breast cancer, family history and breast density. The average five-year
breast cancer risk for a 50-year-old white woman with no prior family
history of breast cancer is 1.25 percent, the calculator shows. It
ranges from less than 1 percent, to 2.70 percent, depending upon breast
density, for the same woman with a history of a prior breast biopsy,
regardless of whether the biopsy was positive or negative.
Getting a mammogram every other year instead of annually did not
increase the risk of advanced breast cancer in women ages 50 to 74,
according to a study that was published last year. The recommendation to
reduce the frequency and delay the start of mammography screening was
based on research showing the risk of false-positive results – which
needlessly expose women to the anguish of a possible breast cancer
diagnosis and the ordeal of further testing – outweighed the benefits of
detecting cancers earlier.
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