A recent study backs up the benefits of breast cancer screening.
The study suggests these benefits "are modest at best," and recommends women receive balanced information about the potential consequences associated with mammograms, a BMJ-British Medical Journal news release reported.
Some of these consequences include "[over diagnosis], psychological stress, and high healthcare costs," the news release reported.
Randomized trials from the 1970s and 80s suggested mammography prevented breast cancer deaths, but the methods of these studies have often been met with skepticism. Advances in technology have also brought up the question of whether or not these findings are still relevant.
Researchers worked to evaluate the effectiveness of mammography by comparing patients who had been screened with those who have not.
The team looked at women from Norway who were between the ages of 50 and 79 between the years of 1986 and 2009. They used a simulation mode to determine how many women between the ages of 50 and 69 would need to be invited to screenings every two years in order to prevent one breast cancer death during their lifetime.
Based on a study sample of 15 million "person years of observation," breast cancer deaths occurred in about 1,175 of the women who were invited to the screenings and 8,996 who were not invited.
After adjusting for other health factors the team found mammography was associated with a 28 percent reduced risk of death of breast cancer death when compared with the patients who did not receive screening. The screening effect declined with age.
"In our study, the estimated benefit for breast cancer mortality (28 [percent]) associated with invitation to mammography screening indicates a substantial effect," authors said, the news release reported."[But evolving improvements in treatment] will probably lead to a gradual reduction in the absolute benefit of screening," they said.
