Roswell Park weighs in on mammograms

There is a lot of confusion and skepticism among women tonight following a stunning recommendation by a government task force about mammograms.

A panel of doctors and scientists says most women do not need mammograms in their 40's and should get one every other year starting at age 50. That's a stunning reversal that contradicts with the long-standing position of the American Cancer Society.

The federal panel also goes as far as to say self-breast exams do no good and women should not be taught to do them. Cancer survivors and some doctors fear this news could do more harm than good.

Shelia Slaughter, a breast cancer survivor, said "Early detection saved my life. What more is there to say about that?"

Dr. Freya Schnabel of the NYU Langone Medical Center added, "Mixed messages always have bad fallout. People will then choose which way to go or throw their hands up saying, 'if the doctors and researchers can't decide, how am I going to decide?'"

The government task force says getting screened so early often leads to too many false alarms and unneeded biopsies. The American Cancer Society rejects these new guidelines and says it will continue to recommend annual screenings for all women beginning at forty.

As you can imagine, this report has sent shockwaves through research hospitals like Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Dr. Stephen Edge, the clinical chief of breast surgery at Roswell Park, weighed in on this matter.

Dr. Edge said, "This is an unncessary rehash of old information that highlights some of the liimitation of mammography, but to us is a false interpretation of those data. There's clear evidence that mammography reduces the death rate from cancer for women who get screened. Even this task force acknowledges that the data supports using mammograms to reduce the mortality from breast cancer, but it seems to come across as that it's just not that much mortality that is decreased, so it's not worth it."

"The data are really clear when you get down to it that we reduce the death rate from breast cancer by doing mammogramies. I've seen women today who've had very small breast cancers detected by mammography that came to see me for treatment today."

"I recommend that women get mammography beginning at age 40 and do it annually thereafter. They should continue their own self-exam because honestly we find people who find their lumps that aren't found by mammography. They do need to recognize that a mammogram may lead to their having to have a biopsy and that, in fact, the majority of time we do a biopsy, it proves to not be cancer."