Sunday, September 26, 2010

To mammogram or not to mammogram?

From the New York Times article "Mammograms' Value in Cancer Fight at Issue":
Starting in their 40s or 50s, most women in this country faithfully get a mammogram every year, as recommended by health officials. But the study suggests that the decision about whether to have the screening test may now be a close call.
...
Previous studies of mammograms, done decades ago, found they reduced the breast cancer death rate by 15 to 25 percent, a meaningful amount. But that was when treatment was much less effective.
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The study, published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, looked at what happened in Norway before and after 1996, when the country began rolling out mammograms for women ages 50 to 69 along with special breast cancer teams to treat all women with breast cancer.
Click here to access the NYT article. Click here to access the NEJM article.

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