BARCELONA - ARE doctors overtreating breast cancer? At a breast cancer conference on Friday in Barcelona, experts discussed how to implement mammogram screening programmes across Europe, balancing fighting cancer with the goal of targeting only those women who need to be screened.
For years, officials have promoted breast cancer screening as the best way to spot the disease and save lives. Yet mammograms are far from perfect and come with an unwelcome side effect: false alarms and unneeded biopsies, without substantially improving women's odds of survival.
The mammogram issue ignited a fierce debate in the United States last year when an influential government panel recommended scaling back screening programs to begin at age 50 instead of 40 - guidelines close to many in Europe.
In most women, tumors are slow-growing, and that likelihood increases with age. So there is little risk by extending the time between mammograms, some researchers say. Even for the minority of women with aggressive, tumors, annual screening seems to make little difference in survival odds.
US researchers last year estimated five lives saved per thousand women screened.
'The over-diagnosis problem has been downplayed because people really want to believe screening works,' said Karsten Jorgensen of the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen, who has published several papers on the issue. 'There is a lot of overtreatment happening, and it is time to re-evaluate whether the benefits really outweigh the harms.' Yet others say doctors must work with the tests they have. -- AP
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