No Mammogram For You!

(Johnson City, Tennesssee) According to decision-makers at the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), no mammogram screening of women between 40 and 49 years of age should be performed. Presumably, it's all about efficiency and cost.

However, not everyone agrees.

Jocelyn Medina, M.D., a radiologist at Mountain States Health Alliance says with the study’s recommendations, many lives in the Tri-Cities would be at risk. From this year alone, cancer cases at the Women’s Health and Imaging Center prove her point.

“I can tell you we had 92 cancers diagnosed. Twenty of those were between age 37 and 50. That to me is not an insignificant number,” she said.

The study also doesn’t recommend self-breast examinations as a method of early detection.

It's not exactly clear why self-examinations would be discouraged. However, since even minor concerns discovered during self-exams would lead to requests for mammograms, a program to mitigate the number of mammograms would likely include measures to reduce the number requested by women examining themselves.

Furthermore, I'd suggest that the reason that mammograms for women 40 to 49 have been eliminated is that breast tumors are very small and difficult to detect within that age range but at the age of 50 and beyond sufficient growth of tumors has occured and they are easily seen. Based on their statistical analysis, the task force experts likely concluded that it's better to wait until the cancers are readily detectable rather than spend money on mammograms producing negative results.

Having medical choices decided by demographics as opposed to diagnostics is disturbing. I'd hate to think that people would have to phony up their personal data just to assure they could see a doctor.