Do Mammograms Improve Patient Outcomes?

Executive Summary

• Mammography is widely considered to be something that all women should have done.
• What are the outcomes of mammography?

Introduction

Mammography is considered a perfect way to protect one’s health and is presented as the responsible thing for women to do. In this article, I analyze something that is little analyzed by both those presenting mammography screening, and by those that agree to be screened, which is what the effectiveness of mammography is in terms of outcomes for those that undergo mammograms.

Promoting Cancer Screening By Exaggerating the Benefits and Leaving Out the Risks

In the following video, at the 4:00 minute mark, points to a study that shows that those seeking to promote cancer screening leave out the risk and exaggerate the benefits.

In contrast, Komen’s public advertizing campaign gives women no sense that screening is a close call. Instead it simply tells women to be screened, overstates the benefit of mammography and ignores harms altogether. We have too often ignored the fact that people have different values related to false positives, false negatives, overdiagnosis, and perhaps most critically, overtreatment. We have focused on persuading rather than educating, implying that there is an a priori best choice for each individual.

This is where screening moves away from informed consent. The cancer screening industry seeks to promote people to get screened — informed consent does not factor anywhere in their presentation of screening to the public.

At the 4:40 mark in the video, it highlights quotes from the article Breast Cancer Screening Pamphlets Mislead Women.

In Germany, the Harding Center for Risk Literacy (of which I am a director) successfully exposed health organizations for misinforming the public about mammography screening. As a result, since 2010, all deceptive related risks and five year survival rates have been removed from German information literature, and harms are now reported in absolute numbers. Thusfar, however, no German organization has dared to publish a fact box.

In Austria, the Tyrolean Society for General Medicine did and was immediately attacked by representatives for the local gynaecology departments.

I call on all women and women’s organizations to tear up the pink ribbons and campaign for honest information. Only by correcting the current misinformation rate of 98% in various countries will women be in a position to make informed decisions.