Posted by
Catmman on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 10:28:34 AM
A federal panel has recommended breast cancer mammograms be reduced or eliminated altogether and that teaching self-examination is unnecessary.
Women in their 40s should stop routinely having annual mammograms and
older women should cut back to one scheduled exam every other year, an
influential federal task force has concluded, challenging the use of
one of the most common medical tests.
For years doctors and patient groups have advocated woman over 40 get an annual mammogram to detect breast cancer early. As far back as I can remember, this has been the advice. I cannot remember any group, federal panel or cancer organization saying annual exams are dangerous or carry more risk than they are worth. Now some of those groups are saying that very thing:
Several patient advocacy groups and many breast cancer experts welcomed
the new guidelines, saying they represent a growing recognition that
more testing, exams and treatment are not always beneficial and, in
fact, can harm patients. Mammograms produce false-positive results in
about 10 percent of cases, causing anxiety and often prompting women to
undergo unnecessary follow-up tests, sometimes-disfiguring biopsies and
unneeded treatment, including surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.
I have never known a false positive on a cancer exam to result in radiation or chemotherapy as "unnecessary" treatment. Yet if you read this article, that is exactly what we are being told. I and my wife have extensive experience with cancer (cervical, uterine, melanoma) - tests, biopsies, surgery and chemotherapy, etc.
NEVER has
ANY doctor either of us seen
EVER recommended chemotherapy or radiation as a result of a single test. There must be corroborating evidence through further tests, biopsies, etc. While some biopsies can be 'disfiguring' (as a site on my left forearm demonstrates), this is hardly a reason to recommend less cancer testing.
Further evidence this is ultimately about rationing:
The new guidelines also recommend against teaching women to do regular
self-exams and concluded that there is insufficient evidence to
recommend that doctors do the exams or to continue routine mammograms
beyond age 74.
Not only does the panel not want doctors doing the exams, they also don't want you to do them yourself. This is another area which has been browbeat frankly into people for years. Do your own exams in the shower, that type of stuff. And if your over a certain age - sorry - no screening at all for you. Can you say '
Death Panel'?
I like this part:
"What isn't in the model but is an issue is how many extra imaging
tests are done to follow up on things that turn out to be falsely
positive and the harm of the anxiety that goes along with that,"
Petitti said. "Then there's the whole other line of problems that come
into play, which is where there are some breast cancers detected that
grow very slowly and would never have killed you."
Get that? There isn't any need to test so much anyway since some of the cancers don't kill anyway. Of course you'll never know what type of cancer you have -the
good kind or the
bad kind - without getting the appropriate tests and biopsies, but that's just quibbling.
This administrations 'health care reform' isn't even a done deal yet and here we have government panels advocating for the very thing people like Nancy Pelosi have argued vehemently against - rationing. President Obama himself said you would be able to keep the doctor you liked - and that may be true - but your doctor will now be instructed to not give you treatment you may need.
ADDENDUM:
After reading the article again I found this part:
In addition, the task force commissioned an unusual study funded by the
National Cancer Institute that involved six independent teams of
researchers conducting separate mathematical modeling studies of the
risks and benefits of 20 screening strategies.
Statistics, modeling, formulas.
Ask the New England Patriots
how well that modelling thing works out.