Two European studies, one published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine and one this year in the British Medical Journal, found the death-reducing benefits of breast cancer screening to be "disappointingly small," the authors said.

"Consequently, we believe that readers should focus on the values toward the low end (5 percent -10 percent) and recognize that the probability that a woman with screen-detected breast cancer has, in fact, avoided a breast cancer death because of screening mammography is now likely to be well below 10 percent," they write.


The researchers say although finding cancers early often makes them more treatable, population-wide screening programs like mammography also have risks of overtreatment and may have little impact on overall mortality. This is because many cancers detected during screening would have also shown up clinically in time to be treated or would never have killed the patient, the researchers said.

Personal testimonies

Unlike some of the recent studies on breast cancer screening, which experimentally examine its merits, the authors say they conducted their study simply to give women a more realistic view of what screening mammograms can accomplish, especially in light of persuasive stories from cancer survivors and celebrities.

"We believe that this information is important to put cancer survivor stories in their proper context," they write.

There are now about 12 million cancer survivors in the U.S., according to National Cancer Institute figures from 2008. And nearly 2.5 million of them are breast cancer survivors. The authors note that, in a 2005 scan of newspapers over a four-month period, each published about one survivor story a month.

"[T]he appeal of survivor accounts is that they are simple and persuasive: Get tested, get treated, it can save your life -- it did mine," write Drs. Timothy Wilt and Melissa Partin in a comment accompanying the article. "However, clinicians do not need to rely on personal accounts from survivors or others, which may be prone to distortion and misinterpretation, to provide a simple and persuasive message about screening for their patients."

ACR response

In a statement, the ACR said there's "an enormous amount of scientific evidence that supports screening" and noted that Wilt, who wrote the commentary, sits on the United States Preventive Services Task Force, which in 2009 controversially recommended women with average risks in their 40s should not get screened. However, citing a February American Journal of Roentgenology article that used the same models USPSTF based their decision on, the ACR said if the USPSTF plan were followed, an additional 100,000 women, now in their 30s, would, over time, be lost to breast cancer.

"The fact that an individual can never be certain their own life was saved is no reason to ignore the scientific evidence that thousands of lives are being saved by annual mammography beginning at the age of 40," the ACR said.

Back to HCB News

More Industry Headlines