Cancer - Breast Cancer

Potential Risks of Mammography Screening

Screening mammography is often inaccurate, and many women receive false-positive or false-negative results. A false-positive occurs when a woman's mammogram shows a suspicious lump, but she actually does not have breast cancer. A false-negative occurs when a woman's mammography results are normal, but she actually has breast cancer.

Another potential risk of mammography is overtreatment. There are some types of early breast cancers that will never spread to other parts of the body, and mammograms probably find many of these breast cancers. Detecting and removing breast cancers that would never have spread to other parts of the body does not save any lives. Unfortunately, doctors have not figured out how to tell which breast cancers will eventually spread and which will not.

Finally, mammography may harm women in ways that are not yet known.
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