Cancer screening, Pro and con Options

[stocks]

John pledges not to get his prostate checked:

http://bloggingheads.tv/video.php?id=356




Which cancer screenings work?:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn41..._n12569684/pg_1

[stocks]

Cochrane Colloboration -- Screening for breast cancer with mammography

The Cochrane Collaboration is an international consortium that evaluates medical research

Screening with mammography uses X-ray to try to find breast cancer before a lump can be felt. The goal is to treat cancer early, when a cure is more likely.
The review includes seven trials that involved 600,000 women who were randomly assigned to receive screening mammograms or not.
The review found that screening for breast cancer likely reduces breast cancer mortality, but the magnitude of the effect is uncertain.

... for every 2000 women invited for screening throughout 10 years:

1 will have her life prolonged
10 healthy women will be diagnosed as breast cancer patients and will be treated unnecessarily
200 women will experience important psychological distress for many months because of false positive findings

Mammography

[stocks]

Cochrane Colloboration -- Screening for breast cancer with mammography

... for every 2000 women invited for screening throughout 10 years:

1 will have her life prolonged
10 healthy women will be diagnosed as breast cancer patients and will be treated unnecessarily
200 women will experience important psychological distress for many months because of false positive findings

Expert branded a "woman hater" for saying breast cancer screening ruins lives

‘It is a biological fact of life that we cannot avoid getting cancer as we get older,’ says Professor Gotzsche.

‘It’s so common nearly all middle-aged people will have some sign of it and most of them will die without having had any symptoms as a result.’

In other words, scanning finds cancerous changes that would otherwise never have caused a problem in your lifetime.

But once a mammogram picks up something that might be a tumour, you’re on your way to becoming a cancer patient because there are no reliable ways of telling if you’ve got the slow-growing or disappearing type, or if it is going to become dangerously invasive.

You will be sent for a biopsy and, if it’s cancerous, you get the full cancer works — surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, and possibly have your breast removed.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-...l#ixzz1qKBh7SJ2