The Case for Skipping Breast Self-Exams | Newsweek Voices - Sharon Begley | Newsweek.com
Maybe we can move beyond the paranoia and hysteria to ask why neither mammograms nor breast self-exams save many lives. (How many lives are saved by mammograms? The task force estimates that 1,904 women in their 40s would have to be screened for a decade in order to save a single life. The numbers aren't much better for women in their 50s: to save one life, you have to screen 1,300 for a decade. I'm not aware of a similar calculation for BSE, but the numbers are undoubtedly equally abysmal.) A good part of the reason why screening asymptomatic patients (which is what screening is: looking for cancer in people with no symptoms of the disease) is not more effective, I am sorry to say, is that even breast cancers caught super-early might not be treatable. That is, they have already dispatched malignant cells into the lymph system, through which they travel to the bones and brain and kill you, as I explained in a column earlier this year.
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