Proponents of prostate screening point to the success of routine mammography for women over 50 in greatly reducing the breast-cancer mortality rate.
This technique, known as mammography, can show changes in the breast well before a woman or her doctor can feel them, and it has significantly reduced mortality from the disease.Reading mammograms, however, is a tricky business.
But precisely because the recommendation would lead to less care and lower costs, critics (and heretofore unknown experts in mammography) have used the study to lash out at reform and reinforce the fallacy that more care equals better care".Suffice to say, you could hardly imagine a better example of why cost control is so hard," says Mr Klein.
Three trials found that mammography of younger women did not improve their chances of survival.
In short though the studies were done on mice, not human beings, and the X-ray doses used in mammography are low extra screening might cause the disease it is supposed to give warning of.A more desperate measure, but one that some women take, is to have their breasts or ovaries removed pre-emptively, even before there is any sign of cancer.
Preliminary clinical research is now under way to look at how the technology can be used to monitor the development of breast cancer and identify how far it has progressed.Even with mammography and ultrasound, the current gold standards for breast-cancer screening, doctors cannot tell if a tumour is malignant or benign without performing an invasive and expensive biopsy.
India's old man in a hurry Five into NATO won't go ReprintsTo date, eight randomised trials of mammography have been conducted around the world, but only one has focused on women in their 40s.
Before they are palpable, growths in the breast may be detected through a procedure known as mammography, which entails the use of X-rays to detect lesions in breast tissue.
Stereotaxic fine-needle biopsy also is used to evaluate breast lesions that are not palpable but are detected by mammography.
Examples include regular cervical Papanicolaou test screening and mammography.
Secondary preventive measures include mammography, clinical breast examinations, and breast self-examinations for breast cancer; pelvic examinations and Papanicolaou tests for cervical and ovarian cancer; and sigmoidoscopy, digital rectal examinations, and stool tests for occult blood for colorectal cancer.
