Are breast self-exams worthwhile?
Research into women’s health issues this past year has been as disturbing as PMS mood swings. A few months ago women were stunned and confused when a study into replacement hormones was halted. Researchers found that taking estrogen and progestin to alleviate the symptoms of menopause, contrary to long-held beliefs, increased rather than prevented heart disease. The risks far outweighed the benefits of taking the supplement.
Another study suggested that mammograms might not be as valuable as thought in detecting breast cancer.
Now, yet another study into women’s health shakes a core belief.
From adolescence through old age, women are repeatedly told to perform a monthly breast exam. Women have been taught in nearly every visit to the doctor, through countless public awareness campaigns and news stories that routine breast exams could save their lives. Through these exams, that take just a few minutes, women were told they could spot abnormalities quickly. And the earlier cancer is detected the better the chances of beating it.
But a decade-long study of more than 260,000 women in Shanghai that was published this week in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute shakes these long-held beliefs. Researchers found that women were unable to detect tumors early enough to reduce their risk of dying from breast cancer.
Does this mean women should stop breast self-exams? Are they a waste of time? Do they give women a false sense that what they are doing makes a difference? Not necessarily.
It’s important to note that this study was conducted to determine if spending an extraordinary amount of time and money to teach women self exams in developing countries, where health care lags significantly behind U.S. standards, paid off in lives saved. It didn’t. But that could be for far more reasons than appear on the surface. Women in Shanghia most likely do not have access to the latest breast cancer treatments as American women. Therefore, their outcome might not be as encouraging regardless of how early tumors were detected.
Women should discuss with their physicians whether to continue with self-exams.
Some doctors might find little value in continuing the practice; others might point to cases where women did pick up on tumors and started treatment sooner than if they had waited for a mammogram.
Women should make decisions based on information from their own trusted physicians, and not solely on a study that might be countered in a few months by a different group of researchers.