Tag Archives: mammography

Mammography Should Start at Age 40 Says Task Force

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) just released a new breast cancer mammography screening recommendation. It advised that mammography should start at age 40, though the report nowhere mentions this new start. The Task Force’s full report is appended below. Here are some direct quotations from the report which presumably contain the evidence for…


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Mammography Screening in Switzerland

The May 22, 2014 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine has a perspective piece that is even more instructive than its authors and the journal’s editors realized: ‘Abolishing Mammography Screening Programs? A View from the Swiss Medical Board’. It describes the process that the Swiss used to evaluate the scientific foundation for the…


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The Cost of a Mammogram

The descent to health helplessness is illustrated  by mammography. Everyone had been in hysterics about whether health insurance, government or otherwise, will cover routine mammograms. Forget about whether the procedure is useful or not and focus on what it tells us about our loss of self reliance. The average cost of a mammogram is $102…


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The Limitations of Cancer Screening

A recent article in the JAMA has received a lot of coverage in the lay press. It analyzes screening for breast and prostate cancer. Critics of both screening tests (including me) have, over many years, pointed out the problems inherent in screening for any disease, but most specifically these two. We mostly have been ignored….


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