Quotes About Mammography

In 1992, I was a young doctor working as a diagnostic radiologist in the outpatient mammography division of a leading teaching hospital.

Mammography will remain a controversial issue because it is an imperfect tool involving ionizing radiation. Let's move beyond this method that is decades old and move forward with an early detection method for breast cancer that will not increase a women's cancer risk at all.

I am often asked about three assumed benefits of mammography: less metastatic disease, less need for aggressive treatments, and important reassurance. Unfortunately, reviewing the actual evidence suggests that these "benefits" are limited or nonexistent.

What is most certain about screening mammography in the United States is that it leads to a lot of false alarms: worrisome mammograms, and yet subsequent testing—another mammogram, an ultrasound, an MRI, and/or a biopsy—ultimately finds no cancer. For example, among 1,000 American women age fifty screened annually for a decade, how many will have at least one false alarm? Somewhere between 490 and 670. And 70 to 100 will be biopsied to prove they don't have cancer.