Not so fast.
A new study casting doubt on mammograms is based, in part, on research done a quarter-century ago, before the quality of screenings improved, a top Manhattan cancer radiologist wants you to know.
“Reports like this will discourage women from having mammograms and reverse the gains we’ve made in the last 20 years,” said Dr. Carol Lee, a diagnostic radiologist at Memorial Sloan- Kettering Cancer Center.
Lee was railing against a study of Canadian women in the British Medical Journal that questions the value of mammograms, even suggesting that in some cases, they do more harm than good with overdiagnosis and overtreatment.
The Canadian study, featuring data from 90,000 women over 25 years, found that the death rates from breast cancer and from all causes were the same in women who got mammograms and those who did not.