Mammograms Misdiagnose Up To 21% of Women

This is excerpted from a Reuters report dated December 11th, 2007.

By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Women with lumps in their breasts rely on their radiologists to accurately read their mammograms, but the accuracy of those readings varies widely, U.S. researchers on Tuesday.

Earlier studies found variation in the quality of screening mammograms. But the new research found inconsistencies even when a lump was present, leaving some women open to false positive results or even missed diagnoses, said Diana Miglioretti, a researcher at the Group Health Center for Health Studies in Seattle, whose study was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Miglioretti and her team evaluated 123 radiologists who looked at 36,000 diagnostic mammograms from 1996 through 2003 at 72 U.S. facilities, including six from Group Health, a nonprofit health maintenance organization in Washington.

They found that sensitivity -- the ability to accurately detect cancer -- ranged from 27 percent to 100 percent. False positives ranged from 0 to 16 percent.

"On average, 21 percent of breast cancers were missed and 4.3 percent of women underwent a biopsy even though they didn't have breast cancer," Miglioretti said in a telephone interview.

Read the whole article here.
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Requesting and ultrasound to go along with your mammogram may reduce your chance of misdiagnosis.

Posted by Juliette Aiyana, L.Ac.