Women Threatened By The High Rate Of False Positive Mammograms

Now there’s another reason to be concerned about the push for women to have a yearly mammogram. In a new study by the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) Research shows that women who receive annual mammograms decade, more than half of these women are called and told the heartbreaking news that their tests are positive when in fact they are free of cancer. Victims of false positives – and not a malignant tumor – are subjected to various tests. In fact, one in twelve of these women undergo invasive surgery, which can scar biopsy.

“This study provides an accurate estimate of the risk of false positive mammography and breast biopsy in women undergoing repeat mammography in practice, and that important information about the possible disadvantages of mammography,” says Karla Kerlikowske, a professor of medicine at UCSF School of Medicine . Karla is also co-author of the study, which was just published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Results of the false-positive mammogram rampant
By simply changing the detection of cancer each year in two years, researchers have shown that the risk that a woman has a false-positive results increased from 61 percent to 42 percent (about a third) more than ten years. They also found that if the radiologist simply review the previous mammograms of a patient “can halve the chances of a withdrawal of false positives.”
The study found that women who started having mammograms at age 40 instead of 50 were much more prone to false positives that led to costly and unnecessary medical tests, including biopsies.
The new study found that after a decade of annual assessments, the majority of women receive at least one false positive result. Of these, 7 to 9 percent will be faced with a biopsy and the risks involved – complications from anesthesia scars to infection – even though these women are, in fact, not cancer.
The US Preventive Services Task Force guidelines now recommend a mammogram two years from age 50 and continued until the age of 74th, but many doctors still recommend an annual mammogram, often from the age of 40.And what about the argument that annual mammograms are necessary to catch the cancer early enough to cure? The researchers found that women be screened every two years were not significantly more likely to be diagnosed with advanced cancer.The research, led by the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle for the Consortium monitoring of breast cancer, investigated false-positive mammography by studying the records of about 170 000 women aged between 40 and 59 in seven regions around the the United States. Nearly 4500 of these subjects were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer.