After a harrowing hospital malpractice ordeal and years of endless pain because of that and 2 subsequent life threatening surgeries over the course of 4 years to correct the mistake, you may be able to understand my reluctance to endure any more medical procedures, especially those known to inflict pain. One of the procedures that was axed from my life was the mammogram for many reasons; the 2 most prominent being pain and efficacy. For one thing, dense breasts mask more lumps so mammogram providers double down on the torture, but still produce no better results, which are less than adequate. It was also proven around the year 2000 that MRIs actually produce better detection outcomes but Mammograms businesses invested so much money into their expensive torture devices that they are unwilling to spend any more money to replace them for better results. And why would they when Breast Cancer Treatment is a 200 hundred billion dollars a year enterprise?
Then in 2012, Dr Robert Kaplan published his concerns and research regarding the dangers of radiation from mammograms: "Mammograms cause cancer by exposing the body to ionizing radiation that can be 1,000 times greater than that from a chest x-ray, which we know poses a cancer risk.
"If a woman follows the current guidelines for premenopausal screening, over a 10 year period she would receive a total dosage of about 5 rads. This approximates the level of exposure to radiation of a Japanese woman one mile from the epicenter of atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki." ... [In] a study by Dr. Robert M. Kaplan, the chairman of the department of health services at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles... they found 22 percent more invasive breast tumors in the group who had mammograms every two years compared to the group who had just one mammogram over a six-year period."
Fast forward to 2018, now almost 20 years later, and here we still are: same equipment, same detection rates, same radiation exposure from mammograms, according to multiple and ongoing studies, now even questioning the usefulness of mammograms while admitting the same thing discovered in 2000: MRIs do a better detection job, are far less dangerous and as an added bonus--pain free. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/rethinking-the-screening-mammogram-2018062814151
Unless you have the BRCA gene that predisposes you to breast cancer, you can try to lower your susceptibility to developing this dreaded disease by following your doctor's #1 rule: Maintain a healthy weight and lifestyle throughout life and nourishing your body with fruits and vegetables, cutting back on alcohol and tobacco, and conducting self-exams every month. https://www.nfcr.org/blog/7-ways-reduce-breast-cancer-risk/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIg--_k8DG4wIVV8DICh2QCQ8pEAAYASAAEgJf6_D_BwE So while most of the jury is still officially out on whether mammograms cause cancer, why then are we still using them when we have painless less dangerous and more proven advanced methods for diagnoses? Follow the money, baby. Follow the money.
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