scanman's posterous

@nickgenes that is a LOT of steps! posterous is easier, apparently. @Scanman vouches for it!

— Pranab Chatterjee (@Scepticemia) December 10, 2011

This was done with a single click on the posterous bookmarklet button.

Dr. Julie Gralow, director of breast medical oncology at the University of Washington in Seattle, disagreed strongly with the new study findings.

"The cumulative evidence from randomized clinical trials shows the screening mammograms reduce deaths due to breast cancer," she said. "This is objective fact."

The effects of the harms of a false positive mammogram are very subjective, Gralow added. "A call-back for additional views is expected in a certain percentage of women; many times the extra images are enough to resolve the problem without a biopsy," she said.

"If you want to catch as many cancers at an early stage as possible, you have to follow up on anything of moderate suspicion. Many women understand this and accept it," Gralow said.

A biopsy, which is rarely done surgically any more, that shows benign disease has the potential for some psychological harm, Gralow acknowledged. "But it can't possibly be weighed equally or even close to equally against saving a life," she said.

"For many women surgery for a low-risk breast cancer is just not a big deal," she added. "I'd equate surgery for low-risk breast cancer with removing a colon polyp. It may or may not cause trouble if not removed, but it usually means you have a higher risk of development of a cancer in another location."

The benefits beyond lives saved are missing from many of the recent analyses of screening mammograms, Gralow said.

"Finding a cancer at an earlier stage, when it is smaller, and before it travels to the lymph nodes or beyond, means less chance of mastectomy and more chance of lumpectomy, less need for chemo or other drugs, less need for radiation, etcetera. Needing less aggressive therapy is a big bonus, and that's hard to calculate into the equation," she said.

I agree with Dr. Gralow's commentary.

Read the free fulltext BMJ article from the link above.