Now you see it… now you don’t

New research suggests that mammography, the low dose x-ray procedure that helps doctors diagnose small tumors in the breast, might frequently pick up tumors that will go away on their own. Scientists in Norway tracked two populations of over 100,000 women between the ages of 50 and 64. One group received mammograms every two years while those in the other group had a single mammogram at the end of the six-year study. The incidence of invasive breast cancer (the type of cancer that has spread beyond the milk ducts and into the surrounding tissue) was 22% higher in the frequent screening group. This finding led researchers to speculate that mammograms had detected cancers that would have regressed if the women had received no treatment. Otherwise they would expect the two groups, which had parallel risk factors, to have similar breast cancer incidence. Read more
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