maven&meddler

How I wish screening mammography were the whole answer. I got my mammograms faithfully every year, yet they failed to find my cancer almost until it was too damn late. I was Stage IIIa. The flat, disc shaped tumor was more than two inches across.

Mammograms do a miserable job at finding Lobular Breast Cancer.

Read on from the National Breast Cancer Coalition:

An article in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times, Cancer Society, in Shift, Has Concerns on Screenings, reported the American Cancer Society was considering changing its position on cancer screening “now saying that the benefits of detecting many cancers, especially breast and prostate, have been overstated.”

For more than a decade, NBCC has taken the position that mammography screening has significant limitations and should be a personal choice rather than a public health message. We continue to affirm that position.  Women should make a decision about whether to undergo screening mammography after weighing the risks and benefits.

Yesterday, organization president, Fran Visco was interviewed by World News Tonight with Charles Gibson (ABC) and offered NBCC’s viewpoint on the information presented and questions raised in the New York Times article. 

Today, NBCC has released a statement further explaining our long-held position on mammography screening. 

NBCC believes women deserve to know the truth about mammography screening, including its harms, and limitations. The unwarranted emphasis on breast cancer screening and early detection has diverted attention from the reality of breast cancer - the fact that all breast cancers are not equal and that current screening methods are not significantly reducing the toll from lethal breast cancers.  The focus must change from the cancers that will not kill to those that do.  Read the full analysis online.

Continue to dispel the myths of this disease for the remainder of our 31 Myths & Truths campaign. Re-read Myth #2 about screening mammography programs and share it on Facebook and Twitter. Forward this message to those you care about. Learn More. Take Action. And, Join NBCC to advocate for the truth about breast cancer all year round.

Yet, I still get an annual mammogram of my remaining breast. I wouldn’t have it otherwise. I already know that I’m at high risk.

At the end of the day, it’s got to be a cure for cancer and perhaps a different kind of screening that includes different modalities such as ultrasound … which in the right hands would have found my cancer sooner.

Cancer isn’t just one disease. It’s highly complex.

One size fits all answers won’t solve it.

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