Word: cancer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...uproar in the medical community was immediate. In a reversal of standard practice that bewildered physicians and patients around the nation, an independent government panel this week abandoned its long-standing recommendation that healthy women over age 40 get a breast-cancer screen once every year or two years. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force began advising women instead to delay regular screening until age 50, and even then, to get tested only every other year. (Read "U.S. Panel Recommends Delaying Regular Mammograms Until...
...American Cancer Society promptly declared it would not modify its guidelines that healthy women over 40 get yearly mammograms. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius stated that the government's "policies remain unchanged." And most physicians say they will continue to recommend annual mammograms for women over 40. Meanwhile, thousands of women across the country have been left confused and anxious. (Read about rates of breast cancer around the world...
...member panel found that yearly mammograms unquestionably reduced the risk of dying from breast cancer 15% in women under 50. But when weighed against the risks of screening - false positives, additional biopsies and patient anxiety - the relative benefit was too small to recommend screening in younger women. That conclusion has incensed some oncologists. "They are saying that we should take mammography away from women in their 40s because ... these factors outweigh the value of lives saved," says Dr. David Dershaw at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. (See pictures from an X-ray studio...
...Still, if confused and frustrated women begin opting out of screening altogether, changing guidelines could erode progress that has been made in reducing breast-cancer deaths. Says Dr. George Sledge, president-elect of the American Society of Clinical Oncologists: "If the end result of all of this were to diminish the number of women having mammograms, then that would be a tragedy...
...look at every other attempt to measure outcomes, the American health care system isn't doing that badly. In terms of heart disease or cancer rates, they're about the same as those in European nations. If you look at cancer survival rates, we do quite well. Our system may not be the best, but it's not the worst. It works fantastically inefficiently, in that it costs us twice as much as any other country to achieve roughly the same results. So not only do we have to expand coverage, but we have to cut costs at the same...