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At the moment breast cancer is the second highest cause of death in ladies, after lung cancer. As a result, annual breast mammograms have become common for ladies over 40, or anyone at high risk of developing this threatening, disfiguring disease.

Now that programs like this are established, experts had anticipated that the quantity of cases of complicated breast cancer would drop off, but that’s just not occuring.

Instead the incidence of breast cancer appears to have risen since universal screening became part of our yearly examinations. Why?

Ladies know that early detection of breast cancer can reduce deaths, but that doesn’t mean attending that annual mammogram any less nerve wracking or uncomfortable.

We endure the testing as we’ve been told we need to find mounds when they are too tiny to feel or bring symptoms, before they have got a chance to grow and cause trouble.

But do all cancers lead to concerns?

Late last year a massive Norwegian research of mammography screening for breast cancer found that some aggressive cancers might spontaneously regress given time, leaving no obvious sign that they were ever present in a woman’s body.

Ao it makes you consider, now that we will screen for it, if this type of cancer isn’t sometimes over diagnosed or over handled.

This latest BMJ report citing an over-diagnosis rate for intrusive breast cancer of 35% could actually have you re-thinking that yearly mammogram.

Besides this kind of cancer, over-diagnosis has also been discussed for carcinoma of the prostate as well as neuroblastoma, melanoma, thyroid cancer and lung cancer.

The most recent work on over-diagnosis comes from researchers out of the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen.

The researchers looked at the findings of studies that spanned a 14-year period. 7 years before public mammography screenings were available, and 7 years after government administered mammography-screening programs were in place in five different countries ( Great Britain, Canada, New South Wales, Australia, Manitoba, Sweden and areas in Norway )

They found an over-diagnosis rate of 52% for all cancers, 35% for aggressive breast cancer.

The information indicates an increase in breast cancer incidence shortly after the screening programs were instituted.

What this work counsels, as did the Norwegian study before it, that perhaps not all cancers need to be treated, some may grow too slowly to impact a patient, while others may regress on their own.

It’s important to understand that no doctor or current screening technique can spot the difference between a cancer that is’s life threatening and one that might not be.

In a BMJ editorial that’s's printed with the research, professor of medication Dr. H. Gilbert Welch of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Research understands the issue of over-diagnosis, understanding the trauma and apprehension a woman endures after being given such news by her doctor.

Surgery and chemotherapy bring their own set of difficulties that are physically stressful and emotionally draining, and a horrible trial for patients and their loved ones. Especially those whose cancers may not have required treatment at all.

While this latest research is still not an excuse, or recommendation, to put off your yearly mammogram, it does raise some nagging questions.

Until we all know more, each woman has to choose for herself whether to continue with annual breast mammograms, but it is clear that screening has let us detect earlier cancers and start appropriate treatment earlier and save many peoples lives.

Next – just head on over to the Daily Health Bulletin for more information on mammogram results, plus for a limited time get 5 free fantastic health reports. Click here for more details on this mammogram results studies.

categories: mammogram results,breast mammograms,benign breast cancer