Word: breasting
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...Breast cancer researchers have been arguing for two years about an issue that most women, in the U.S. at least, thought was settled: whether routine mammograms save lives. Given that tens of millions of these tests are performed each year, the women who get them deserve some clarity on the issue. Instead they're getting an old-fashioned academic feud with lots of heat and very little light...
...have a little background. The most important thing to keep in mind is that the debate is about mammograms used to screen healthy women. Researchers are not talking about mammograms that are ordered after a lump has been discovered. Nor are they talking about women previously treated for breast cancer or those who are at high risk because of, for example, a strong family history of the disease...
...renewed debate, thanks to a two-year-old Danish study. The controversial paper, first published in the British journal The Lancet and updated last October, posits that numerous flaws in current mammography technique render the results virtually useless. It also suggests that while mammograms may mean earlier detection of breast cancer, earlier detection does not necessarily mean a lower mortality rate. Specialists across the country met this proposition with outrage, fearing it could keep women from maintaining their mammography schedule...
...Mammograms, which provide detailed imaging of breast tissue, can catch cancer in earliest stages, and for some women early detection means having a choice between a lumpectomy, in which a tumor and the surrounding tissue are excised, and a mastectomy, a far more radical procedure which can result in the complete loss of a breast...
...those are the guidelines to stick with, says Dr. David Decker, an oncologist specializing in breast cancer at the William Beaumont Hospital in metro Detroit. "I tell patients to continue following the recommendations from the American Cancer Society and the NCI," he says...