A recent study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine highlights a growing concern about breast cancer screening in older women.
The study, which involved over 50,000 women, found that continuous breast cancer screening after age 70 often led to diagnoses of cancers that might never have caused symptoms in the patients’ lifetimes.
Such a phenomenon, known as overdiagnosis, seems to be particularly common among older women.
Screening Guidelines and Overdiagnosis:
Guidelines for breast cancer screening in elderly women have been somewhat ambiguous due to the uncertain balance between the potential benefits and risks of screening in this age group.
Prior studies have suggested that breast cancer screening may not be beneficial in reducing mortality in women beyond the age of 75.
Overdiagnosis is emerging as a significant concern associated with cancer screening.
It refers to the detection of cancers, primarily through screenings, that wouldn’t have manifested any symptoms during the patient’s life.
Such overdiagnosis can lead to unnecessary treatments, which may carry their own risks and hardships.
Study Details and Findings:
Conducted by researchers from the Yale School of Medicine, the study analyzed 54,635 women aged 70 and above who had undergone breast cancer screening. The findings were telling:
Among women aged 70 to 74, as many as 31% of detected breast cancers were overdiagnosed.
For women aged 74 to 84, this percentage rose to 47%.
Women aged 85 and older had the highest risk, with overdiagnosis rates reaching up to 54%.
The study also pointed out that there wasn’t a statistically significant reduction in deaths from breast cancer associated with screening in these age groups.
Editorial Insights
An editorial from experts at Johns Hopkins University accompanied the study. It emphasized the frequency and potential harms of overdiagnosis stemming from cancer screenings. The harms of overdiagnosis are multifaceted and include:
Complications arising from unnecessary treatments.
Unwarranted anxiety and emotional stress.
Financial challenges.
Misallocation of medical resources.
The editorial suggests that a potential solution to the overdiagnosis issue may lie in more in-depth genomic studies and a better understanding of cancer’s biopsy and pathological characteristics.
Breast cancer screening for elderly women must be approached with caution.
The potential benefits of detection should be weighed against the significant risk of overdiagnosis and the resulting unnecessary treatments and hardships.
If you care about breast cancer, please read studies about a major cause of deadly breast cancer, and common blood pressure drugs may increase death risk in breast cancer.
For more information about cancer, please see recent studies that new cancer treatment could reawaken the immune system, and results showing vitamin D can cut cancer death risk.
The study was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Follow us on Twitter for more articles about this topic.
Copyright © 2023 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
