New article discusses about changes to breast cancer screening recommendations -
A new article discusses the support of evidence for recent changes by American cancer Society in its recommendations for breast cancer screening. In addition to changing the ages suggestions for annual and half mammography, the new recommendations also focus on patient preferences in decision making.
The authors discuss the subtle but very important difference between sensitivity and false-positive rate for mammography. In asymptomatic women, although about 84% of breast cancers are detected by mammography, about 95% of all positive mammograms are false positives. The authors note that the emphasis on patient participation in making health decisions could be problematic because of the difficulty of patients may have in understanding this technical distinction.
"Our goal was to warn asymptomatic women that positive mammograms are far more likely to be false positives than real evidence of cancer," said Dr. William Skorupski, co-author of the Service article. "for most women, a false positive mammogram is about 19 times more likely than a true positive," added co-author Dr. Howard Wainer.
EmoticonEmoticon