Self-Breast Exams Not As Useful As We Thought?

(www.livelywomen.com) — Apparently it may be time to forget everything you thought you knew about self-breast exams and early breast cancer detection. At least, that’s what some researchers from the Cochrane Collaboration seem to be suggesting.

…a new report questions the usefulness of breast self-exams, finding that the commonly recommended screening tool may not help save women’s lives — and may even do more harm than good.

Researchers from the Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research, came to that conclusion after reviewing two previously published population-based studies involving 388,535 women. In both trials — conducted in Russia and China — investigators randomly assigned women to one of two groups. One group was taught how to perform breast self-exams and was instructed to do them regularly; the control group was not. Among the 587 participants who died of breast cancer during the course of the studies, 292 women had dutifully performed breast self-exams and 295 had not — a minuscule difference that suggests there is no benefit from self-checks.

But the authors go further, issuing a strong warning that breast self-exams may do unnecessary harm, because they put women at risk for unneeded treatment. In the two studies, women who performed breast self-exams underwent 3,406 biopsies with benign results, nearly twice as many as women in the control groups…. (source)

So, because they may not actually be helpful and may put me at risk for unneeded treatment, I just shouldn’t do them? I’m a little confused here, Docs. I assume that vaccinations may protect me from things I may never actually come into contact with, and some may not actually protect me successfully at all, but I’m still supposed to get those. So why not do regular breast self-exams if there’s a chance that they help early detection?

Apparently this is a big part of the reason:

A benchmark study from 1998, published in the Journal of Public Health Medicine, indicates that five months after a benign surgical biopsy, 61% of women still struggled with symptoms of anxiety and psychological distress, including trouble sleeping, change in appetite and a general malaise fueled by thoughts of breast cancer.

Um, okay… I think knowing I didn’t have breast cancer would be far more comforting that wondering if I did, but I guess that’s just me.

I think this is kind of ridiculous. I know, know personally, several women who have found breast lumps through self-examination and caught the disease early enough to avoid some potentially disastrous consequences. For me, that’s enough reason to do it anyway.

What do you think?

Contents © Copyright 2008 Kristen King

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