
Mammograms are a total waste of your time and money - Libertatea
http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/04/17/mammograms-are-a-total-waste-of-your-time-and-money/
======
digikata
In the source article in the New England Journal of Medicine[1] to this
summary article there this statement, "After 25 years of follow-up, it found
that 106 of 484 screen-detected cancers (21.9%) were overdiagnosed." I don't
understand how the recommendation ends up being, "don't bother with
mammography," instead of something like, the protocol after a mammography
returns a result needs to be adjusted. Prostate cancer seems to get into the
exact same bind.

Blinding yourself to additional information because we don't know how to act
correctly on the information seems like a non-solution. I know the flip-side
argument might be that the test isn't uncovering relevant information. As long
as what the test is detecting can be further filtered, why isn't that
filtering the focus? e.g. why wouldn't there be some sort of protocol step of
longer wait-and-see intervals with added monitoring to see if it would cut out
the overdiagnosis after an initial detection event.

[1]
[http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1401875#t=article](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1401875#t=article)

