Mammography Study in BMJ Flawed: Discredited Data Used

Newswise — Discredited and obsolete data used in Raftery and Chorozoglou, published Dec. 8 in the British Medical Journal, underestimated lives saved by mammography screening by half. The authors' comparison of inconvenience and anxiety of false positives to breast cancer deaths is also questionable.

“The estimated 15 percent reduction in breast cancer deaths used in this study is the same used in 2009 by the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force. That estimate has been discredited by a series of large randomized control trials and other data that prove the benefit is at least twice that,” said Barbara Monsees, MD, chair of the American College of Radiology Breast Imaging Commission. “While anxiety over test results is real, most women simply need another mammogram or ultrasound exam to answer questions about their mammogram. A small number will undergo a benign breast biopsy based on an abnormal screening and subsequent evaluation. However, most women would balk at comparing the anxiety of this with that of dying from breast cancer.”

Recently, Tabar et al, a landmark study, published in Radiology, that involved 130,000 women followed over 29 years, re-confirmed that regular mammography screening reduced the breast cancer death rate by 30 percent.

source: Newswise