“Looking at the diagnostic tests that are currently available, none of them are perfect,” Dr. Horner says. “Everything has its pros and cons…Mammography produces radiation, which has been shown to increase the risk of breast cancer. It’s like, “Why are you doing the test to look at a disease when it’s actually causing the disease, too?” … It does pick things up at earlier stages, but the problem is that it’s not very specific. So when it looks and it sees something… that looks suspicious, it is wrong 80 percent of the time. In the United States, there’s roughly a million breast biopsies done per year, and 800,000 of them are unnecessary.” http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/01/14/dr-christine-horner-interview.aspx?e_cid=20120114_DNL_art_1
Major Confusion on How to Do Breast Checks
Is there a right way to check your breasts for early signs of cancer? Many women remain confused as experts now say there is no evidence that rigorous monthly “self-examination” — widely recommended in the United States — reduces breast cancer deaths. Plus, it can lead to unnecessary biopsies.
Two large studies looking at a total of more than 388,000 women found that death rates from breast cancer were the same among women who rigorously self-examined as those who did not, while there were almost twice the number of biopsy operations in the self-examination group.
According to some experts, the best way for a woman to check her breasts is not to follow a strict examination routine, but to get to know what is normal, and feel them regularly for signs of any changes.
