Breast Cancer

In a group of 31,000 women who were screened for breast cancer for three years (with a similar group of women left unchecked) there was a saving of only 38 lives and all of these were older than 50 years; there would therefore seem to be no point in screening women under the age of 50. One of the explanations offered is that in younger women breast cancer may spread too rapidly to be intercepted by screening.

The detection of breast cancer during screening is hailed as a life saved This is unrealistic and incorrect as much depends on the response to treatment. Post-treatment mortality increases with time after the initial, sometimes apparently successful, treatment. In any event, a woman who has had cancer in one breast has a six fold chance of developing cancer in the other breast. Unless she tries to change her lifestyle, the factors which caused the original growth remain unchanged.

The dangers from X-ray mammography used to consist in radiation induced breast cancer in the organ repeatedly screened. This excess breast cancer incidence becomes apparent some 15 years later. Screening can now provide the best hope of reducing the high breast cancer mortality because modern mammography can now detect a cancer in situ (which is a growth that has not yet developed invasive tendencies), as well as a cancer less than 2cm in diameter (which is vastly superior to clinical examination) and since the X-ray dose with up-to-date apparatus has been reduced from 3 rads to 0.3 rads per exposure. A first or baseline mammographic examination should be carried out between the ages of 35 and 40. Subsequent mammographic examinations should be performed at three-yearly intervals. After the age of 50 annual examinations should be carried out. With the very low doses achieved by modern apparatus and with the use of high speed film or sensitive paper, the potential hazard of inducing breast cancer is negligible.