Tough Titties!

Although I was working on a completely different post for today, I felt compelled to write about the recommendations made yesterday by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force regarding routine mammography screening and breast exams.

Yesterday, the USPSTF changed the recommendations from yearly mammographies starting at age 40, to every other year after age 50 until age 74. This does not include women who have actually found a lump that needs to be evaluated or those women with known increased risk factors for breast cancer. They will still be sent for mammography.

The part that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me is that they are now discouraging clinicians from teaching women how to do self-breast exams. But in their statement, they say that women should be aware of any breast changes. How they expect women to be aware of any changes without putting their hands on their breasts is beyond me. Maybe it will be like magic? Maybe it will come to you in a dream? Maybe you will get a little postcard in the mail telling you that you now have a breast lump that you don't know about yet that you should get checked out?

But in their infinite wisdom (yes, sarcasm), they have determined that self-breast exam causes unnecessary "anxiety and breast cancer worry" and may lead to "repeated visits and unwarranted imaging and biopsies." But I applaud them for trying to keep health care costs down. They feel that saving the life of 1 out of every 1904 women is not worth the money or the trouble.

I'll tell you what, if it's my life, I would want to risk the extra radiation exposure, and extra doctor's visits, and risk of scarring from biopsy or surgery to find out. So I say, "Tough Titties!" I'm going to keep checking myself in the shower and keep encouraging other women to do so as well.

You can read the actual USPSTF statement here:
http://www.annals.org/content/151/10/716.full