Study: Many With Breast Cancer Overtreated

1 in 3 Women Diagnosed With Breast Cancer Don't Need Treatment, International Study Finds

(AP)  One in three breast cancer patients identified in public screening programs may be treated unnecessarily, a new study says.

Karsten Jorgensen and Peter Gotzsche of the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen analyzed breast cancer trends at least seven years before and after government-run screening programs for breast cancer started in parts of Australia, Britain, Canada, Norway and Sweden.

The research was published Friday in the BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal. Jorgensen and Gotzsche did not cite any funding for their study.

Once screening programs began, more cases of breast cancer were inevitably picked up, the study showed. If a screening program is working, there should also be a drop in the number of advanced cancer cases detected in older women, since their cancers should theoretically have been caught earlier when they were screened.

However, Jorgensen and Gotzsche found the national breast cancer screening systems, which usually test women aged between 50 and 69, simply reported thousands more cases than previously identified.

Overall, Jorgensen and Gotzsche found that one third of the women identified as having breast cancer didn't actually need to be treated.

Some cancers never cause symptoms or death, and can grow too slowly to ever affect patients. As it is impossible to distinguish between those and deadly cancers, any identified cancer is treated. But the treatments can have harmful side-effects and be psychologically scarring.

"This information needs to get to women so they can make an informed choice," Jorgensen said. "There is a significant harm in making women cancer patients without good reason."

Jorgensen said that for years, women were urged to undergo breast cancer screening without them being informed of the risks involved, such as having to endure unnecessary treatment if a cancer was identified, even if it might never threaten their health.

Doctors and patients have long debated the merits of prostate cancer screening out of similar concerns that it overdiagnoses patients. A study in the Netherlands found that as many as two out of every five men whose prostate cancer was caught through a screening test had tumors too slow-growing to ever be a threat.

"Mammography is one of medicine's 'close calls,' ... where different people in the same situation might reasonably make different choices," wrote H. Gilbert Welch of VA Outcomes Group and the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Research, in an accompanying editorial in the BMJ. "Mammography undoubtedly helps some women but hurts others."

Experts said overtreatment occurs wherever there is widespread cancer screening, including the U.S.

Britain's national health system recently ditched its pamphlet inviting women to get screened for breast cancer, after critics complained it did not explain the overtreatment problem.

Laura Bell of Cancer Research UK said Britain's breast cancer screening program was partly responsible for the country's reduced breast cancer cases.

"We still urge women to go for screening when invited," she said, though she acknowledged it was crucial for women to be informed of the potential benefits and harms of screening.

[didserve]

health industry!

cure something!

anything!

Quit making money off treating illness and cure it!

Prove you are worth the Billions Spent on you every year!

[thusspokezara]

This is another example of doctors ordering unncessary tests. Why they order unnecessary tests? In some cases because they get kick backs from laboratories and testing centers. In other cases they are trying to protect themselves from lawsuits. In other cases they are just ignorant having graduated from second rate schools like NYU and Georgetown. We need to start imposing on doctors strict guidelines. If they deviate from those guidelines, they should be fined. If they keep deviating from them, they should lose their lisence. We have a lot of qualified Foreign Medical Gradautes to take their place.

[Sloughfoot]

No one forces you to go to a Doctor, no one forces you to comply with recommended testing. How about you provide some data for your ranking of NYU and Georgetown as second rate schools. You want to doctor with "Foreign Medical Gradautes" (sp) then that choice is yours, many are ignorant of Western Cultural norms and have offensive bedside manners.

[smoknmirrors]

Did I miss the reference to the United States? Oh yes, a thirteen word sentence with no evidence whatsoever. This study or group of studies, if you will, were all done outside the U.S. in countries where there are no kickbacks from laboratories and testing centers because there is no profit to be made, countries where lawsuits are vitually extinct, and countries where people did not graduate from NYU and Georgetown. Oh, and the Foreign Medical Graduates you think so highly of, are they from Sweden, Australia, Britain, Canada, Norway or the Netherlands, where these "unnecessary" tests were conducted? If you were a doctor, I'd run like blazes away from your diagnostic skills. You need to be able to read and think in order to diagnose, not start from some stereotypical notion of the quality of American medical care and proceed to read this entire article as proof of some closed minded premise.

Finally, all these people are saying is that sometimes we get too old to worry about anymore. Let us die of something else instead.

[Sloughfoot]

Appears to me that Jorgensen and Gotzsche have an agenda other than the health and welfare of breast cancer patients. The only way to detect breast cancer early enough to treat it is by testing for it. The (one-third) nonfatal cases can not be predetermined so all testing should be discontinued. ??????? Jorgensen's and Gotzsche's argument could be expanded to include all cancers and all diseases, hence,(only the most fit should survive). Some Aryan philosophy out of the 30's & 40's I think.