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Many spurn new breast cancer study

Local cancer survivors, and experts reject the proposal of delaying mammograms.

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By Josh Sweigart, Staff Writer 11:39 PM Tuesday, November 17, 2009

If she had not done a self-exam, if she had not gone in for annual screenings, Seven Mile resident Robin Middleton fears she would not have found her breast cancer until it was too late.

That’s why she, local health care providers and the American Cancer Society, are speaking out strongly against a recommendation from a government task force released Monday, Nov. 16.

That recommendation was that most women don’t need routine mammograms until age 50, and then only every two years, and that breast self-exams are unnecessary.

Middleton, 46, found a lump in her breast during a self exam in August 2008. She had no family history of cancer, didn’t smoke or have other risk factors. Chemotherapy, radiation treatment and a lumpectomy later, she had a mammography just last week and was “clear and clean.”

She called the government panel’s recommendation “ridiculous.”

“It’s going to narrow your odds of surviving,” she said.

Officials at The Fort Hamilton Hospital and Atrium Medical Center both say they will continue recommending annual exams starting at age 40 and strongly encourage self exams.

Dr. Hugh Hawkins, director of breast imaging at Atrium in Middletown, agrees that following the task force recommendations would reduce the cost of screenings.

“Unfortunately, it means a lot of women are going to have breast cancer at stages that are worse than what they have now,” he said. “They’re going to be a lot harder to treat if they come in with more disseminated disease ... and that’s going to be expensive.”

Hawkins worries about the impact of the recommendation. He said it confuses the public because President Barack Obama’s own proposed health care reform touts the importance of screening to save money. And it comes on the heels of several years of reducing breast cancer deaths, atributed to increased screenings, Hawkins said.

The American Cancer Society is holding to its recommendations that women should be screened annually after age 40, and says they should speak to their doctors about whether self exams would be useful.

“The (task force) says that screening 1,339 women in their 50s to save one life makes screening worthwhile in that age group. Yet (it) also says screening 1,904 women ages 40 to 49 in order to save one life is not worthwhile,” said Dr. Otis Brawley, American Cancer Society chief medical officer.

“With its new recommendations, the (task force) is essentially telling women that mammography at age 40 to 49 saves lives; just not enough of them,” he said.

Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2175 or jsweigart@coxohio.com.

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