Mammograms - Who Needs Them?
Excerpt from Chapter Five of Breast Cancer? Breast Health! by Susun Weed
Perhaps no aspect of breast cancer is more widely publicized than screening mammography. Ads on television, in magazines, and in the daily paper urge women to deal with fear about breast cancer by having a yearly mammogram. We're even told that doing this is a way to "really care for yourself."
But screening mammograms don't prevent breast cancer. A mammogram is an x-ray and x-rays cause cancer. The ads promoting regular screening mammography are paid for by those who stand to profit from their widespread acceptance and use-the manufacturers of the equipment and x-ray film. Whose health does this technology really benefit? Women's health? Or corporate health?
Should you have a screening mammogram? At what age? How frequently? Science hasn't agreed on answers to these questions.1 I believe that my anti-cancer lifestyle (see page xv) will decrease my risk of dying from breast cancer in a way that regular mammograms won't. I care for my breasts with infused herbal oils, regular loving touch, organic foods, and healthy exercise-and forgo regular screening mammograms. Of course, you can do it all in the Wise Woman Tradition. The point is to pay attention to your breasts.
All mammograms are x-rays.
A mammogram uses radioactive rays to "see" breast tissues. X-rays are known to cause DNA damage in breast cells.
A diagnostic mammogram is used when a woman or her practitioner feels a lump and wants to see it. (Sonograms-a non-radioactive test-can be used instead.) Most diagnostic mammograms are not one x-ray, but a series of x-rays.
A screening mammogram is done on a healthy woman to determine if there are unsuspected signs of cancer, such as a shadow or micro-calcifications. A screening mammogram is not one x-ray, but a series of x-rays, usually two per breast, four in all.
Mammograms are inaccurate.
Low-radiation mammograms are safer mammograms, but less radiation means a fuzzier picture. Standard x-rays-rarely used any more for breasts-create an easy-to-interpert high-radiation image. Xerograms use half that radiation, but are twice as hard to read. Film-screen mammography, the latest very-low-radiation exam, gives an image that's even more difficult to interpret. More than 10 percent of all screening mammograms done at one large center in 1992 couldn't be read and had to be redone.2
A 1994 study showed wide variation in the accuracy with which mammograms are interpreted. Understandably, those who read screening mammograms regularly are more accurate than those who rarely do; in some hospitals, however, work loads are so heavy that accuracy suffers from lack of time, not inexperience.
Roughly 8 out of 10 "positive" mammographic reports are "false positive," that is, a subsequent biopsy does not confirm the presence of cancer. And as many as half (10-15 percent at an excellent facility) of all "negative" mammographic reports are "false negative." 3
According to current data, if all American women 40-50 years old were screened yearly by mammogram, 40 out of every 100 breast cancers would be missed.4 If all women over 50 were screened, 13 out of every 100 breast cancers would be missed. Half of all breast cancers in women under 45 are invisible on a mammogram.5 Screening mammograms often miss the deadliest breast cancers: fast-growing tumors in premenopausal women.
Excerpt from Chapter Five of Breast Cancer? Breast Health! by Susun Weed
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