Public Health in Oregon - Join The Conversation

This notion makes sense in terms of number but it certainly doesn’t convince me to call up all the women in my family and tell them to skip a whole year of testing. I can see both sides clearly but until we do have a clear cause of breast cancer I don’t think it’s save to cut spending on this. If money is an issue there are many others ways to save in public health. By downplaying exams women may downplay the seriousness of breast cancer and the threat it plays in some many lives.

I believe that the recommendation is valid, but I also would address the women who are considered high risk to consult with their physician to develop a plan for their own health needs. If breast cancer is not in their medical history, I would still do the self exams to take precautions.

I believe that self examination benefits in finding a way to lower examination rates. Through public health they can find ways to give the word out about the self breast exams to keep higher possiblities of detecting breast lumps rather giving numerous examinations.

Women with a family history of breast cancer shouldn’t take the recommendation of testing breast cancer at the age of 40 to heart. Breast self examination is probably the most useful tool for early detection, if mammograms is known to increase the risk of cancer growth. Physicians should inform what is detected and how the test is done adequately. Whether its a self examination or a mammogram test, its better safe than sorry.

I feel that if self exams are in fact beneficial, than perhaps saving the money spent on mammograms and various other preventative procedures could be a good thing. However, I still think that it’s a good idea for women to get mammograms, especially if they have family members with breast cancer.

It’s good to know that women being able to do self breast examinations to see if they could possibly have breast cancer is a good thing, just because it will bring down healthcare costs so any way that we can do that is great!

One of the reasons our nations health care is so outrageously expensive, is too much is spent on expensive tests and procedures, like MRI’s or mammograms, which have become common place.
Of course, everyone should have access to health care and preventive care, but unfortunately that is not going to happen in the near future.
I think screening for breast cancer saves lives, especially those who are considered ‘high risk’.  But, it looks like the getting the word out, and teaching women to self exam will be the new screening process.

If mammograms are cost effective perhaps we should push for more self exams and use that money for other options to promote wellness.

This topic is hard to come up with a solution because we do not know the cause of cancer, and therefore have a hard time using our dollars efficiently and making sure things aren’t wasted. Unfortunately right now we are left with the decision to save lives, or save dollars. Naturally, I would side with saving someones life no matter the cost, but it is not just an individual, it is thousands of people and dollars, so the scale goes up and I don’t know if it should be addressed to look at it as a whole, or to view it as it is someone’s loved one, whose life could be saved. I think life is more important, but with how much money is lost in negative mammogram tests, especially in this economy, it would be hard to persuade some people otherwise.

While I do see the point about the number of false positives and the added cost to the health care industry, they have to be willing to ask themselves is eaven one life worth it.  It is worth it to gamble with womens lives. Depending on the type of cancer a small lump could become a large mass in a matter of months, and by that point it is too late. The cancer has had a chance to spread to other parts of the body making it harder to treat.  If I remember correctly from the news, a large number of doctors said they were going to stick with the old screening recomendations.

Well, I certainly think we missed a opprotunity to get out the message on the breast cancer prevention back in November, when new recommendations about mammography were released. The NIH lists some BC prevention points at:

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/prevention/breast/Patient/page3

But I’d also want to know the relative risk/protective factors associated with those prevention activities.

Conflicting information and recommendations without adequate context or “packaging” are confusing to the public and not a good example of health communication messaging. 

te

Dear Sir or Madam:
Referring to the debate about the new screening guidelines for breast cancer, and in attempt to respond to your question, “What can be done now?”
enclosed is my commentary to the issue as published in the New York Times (Online). I will appreciate hearing your reaction.
Respectfully yours,
Arne N. Gjorgov
December 17, 2009

FAREWELL TO CHEMICAL PREVENTION OF BREAST CANCER
The unexpected controversy and confusion about the well-organized programs of mammographic screening for early detection of breast cancer in the population heralded a meltdown of this misconceived activity disguised as a “preventive healthcare” to women. The fiasco of the so-called “chemo-prevention” of breast cancer with Tamoxifen, distributed in community trial to healthy women in the population in many parts of the U.S. and Europe, had its long, costly and unsuccessful chance during the entire decade of 1990s. For, the current breast cancer epidemic has steadily continued to rise, and millions of women’s lives are at stake, in the country and worldwide. In the U.S., the number of affected women with breast cancer (including the in-situ cases) is assesses to be between six and eight million, with at least a quarter of them who perished, during the past three decades, after the early 1980s, and unabated and rising ever since. Without implementation of the etiological, primary (non-chemical, non-profit) prevention of the disease, by eliminating the defined root cause(s) of breast cancer as an epidemic disease, the holocausting of American and other women will go on and on. The (rapid) elimination of the breast cancer epidemic within the anticipated healthcare reform could prove to be a battle for women’s health and lives.
Arne N. Gjorgov, M.D., Ph.D. (UNC-SPH, Chapel Hill, NC)
Author of “Barrier Contraception and Breast Cancer,” 1980: x+164
— Arne N. Gjorgov, MD, PhD