by
Lauren Dubinsky, Senior Reporter | February 14, 2017
Greater outreach and education
needed for these patients
False positive screening mammograms may be more dangerous than previously thought.
A new study published in the journal
Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention found that women with a false positive result were more likely to delay or forgo their next screen than those who had a negative result.
While previous research has suggested that false positive mammograms merely caused heightened anxiety and pain due to additional tests — such as an April 2015
study published in JAMA Internal Medicine which found that women with a false positive result are still likely to undergo future breast cancer screening.
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For this new study, the researchers gathered data from women who received mammography screening in a large health care organization in the greater metropolitan Chicago area.
Out of the 741,150 screening mammograms, 261,767 were included in the study. They found that 12.3 percent had a false positive result and the remaining 87.7 percent had a true negative result.
Among those with a true negative, 22.1 percent had at least one subsequent screening mammogram in the database. Significantly less — 15 percent — of those with a false positive did.
Furthermore, those with a true negative from the first mammogram were 36 percent more likely to have a subsequent screen in the next three years than those with a false positive.
The researchers then reanalyzed the data using different statistical methods to eliminate the chance for bias in the methods. They used propensity scoring matching, and found that those with a true negative were 34 percent more likely to return for their next screen than those with a false positive, and the median delays in screening were six and 13 months, respectively.
As a result, the four-year cumulative risk of late-stage breast cancer was .4 percent for those with a false positive and .3 percent for those with a true negative. The researchers noted that the difference is statistically significant.
To fix this, the researchers suggest that the industry needs to more actively encourage women with a false positive to adhere to routine screening mammography recommendations and educate these women on the evidence that it reduces breast cancer mortality.
