While sitting through treatment yesterday, I was reading the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel and got an eyeful of the new guidelines being recommended by the “U.S. Preventives Task Force”. My first reaction was WTF? You have GOT to be kidding me.

Evidently the Task Force is saying that its unnecessary for women ages 40 to 50 to bother with a mammogram and then (once you hit fifty), getting one every other year. The Task Force’s reasoning is that in a study — 1,904 women (ages 40 to 49) would have to be screened in order to extend the life of just one woman. Whereas, for women ages 50 to 59, 1,339 women would have to be screened to save one life.

Do you feel like playing Russian Roulette with your life and take the chance of being that “one” woman whose life could have been saved if you’d had the screening before you were 50? I know I wouldn’t. I was diagnosed when I was 35 years old. Mine was detected when I noticed a dimple on my right breast. A clear sign that somethin’ was cookin’. But what would have happened had I not had that dimple, or ignored it? What would have happened had I waited until I was 50 to have gotten my first mammogram. I’ll tell ya … I’d be worm food by now.

Where are these people coming from? Mammograms can lead to early detection of breast cancer, which can then be addressed and in many cases, a full recovery and/or remission once follow up treatment is complete. One of their bonehead justifications is that women will worry — a false positive reading may result in psychological harm. Duh! There are a lot of things that women worry about. What’s one more? Then there’s the added worry and/or expense of follow up tests and biopsies that may turn out to be negative. Again — duh!

The research being quoted shows that 98% of abnormalities found in women in their 40s turn out to be false positives. This can be caused by cysts, dense breast tissue that doesn’t give a clear picture or … whatever. Evidently this number of false positives drops to 95% for women in their 50s.

I don’t think these people are giving women enough credit. Sure there will be those who will freak out and start their own funeral arrangements, but by the same token, I’m willing to bet that the majority will suck it up, wait for the results and then deal with it. There will be either a massive sense of relief when it turns out to be negative or, if it turns out to be positive, then she (or he) can decide whether to panic. Believe me … I’d much rather go through the worry and uncertainty than to find out ten years down the line that my life could have been saved had this been caught earlier.

For women at the age of 40, a ten year risk of breast cancer is 1 in 69; the numbers jump to 1 in 42 at the age of 50 and 1 in 29 at the age of 60.

Nancy Brinker, the founder of the Susan G. Komen organization views this report in a positive light … as another opportunity for activism. “If current screening is imperfect, then why not make it better?” I like her attitude. The Komen organization funds over 1,900 education, awareness and screening programs around the world. They’re not changing their own recommendations for annual mammograms and self-examination for women 40 and older. Kudos to them.

What’s your take on this? Personally, I’m outraged and pissed. They can take their recommendations and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. I’ll have to Goggle this Task Force to see how many of their “specialists” are (1) men; and (2) who has never had the personal pleasure of dealing with breast cancer.

And remember to repeat after me …“THE TASK FORCE ARE BONEHEADS AND YOU ARE A CANCER WARRIOR”

This entry was posted on Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 4:13 am and is filed under Liz's Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.