While this latest research is still not an excuse, or advice, to postpone your yearly mammogram, it does raise some rather nagging questions.

Late last year a large Norwegian study of mammography screening for breast cancer discovered that some aggressive cancers might spontaneously regress over time, leaving no obvious sign that they were even present in a girl’s body.

The information reports a jump in breast cancer incidence shortly after the screening programs were instituted.

We live with the tests because we’ve been told we need to find piles when they are too tiny to feel or bring symptoms, before they have a chance to increase and cause difficulty.

Till we all know more, each woman has to decide for herself whether to continue with yearly breast mammograms, but it is clear that screening has let us uncover earlier cancers and kick-off treatment earlier and save many lives.

Now that plans like this are in place, experts had predicted that the number of cases of advanced breast cancer would drop off, but that’s not happening.

This latest BMJ report mentioning an over-diagnosis rate for intrusive breast cancer of 35% could really have you re-thinking that annual mammogram.

But do all cancers cause complications?

Ao it makes you wonder, now that we can screen for it, if this kind of cancer isn’t sometimes over diagnosed or over treated .

The latest work on over-diagnosis comes from researchers out of the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen.

Rather the occurrence of breast cancer seems to have risen since universal screening became part of our yearly examinations. Why?

Besides this kind of cancer, over-diagnosis has also been discussed for carcinoma of the prostate as well as neuroblastoma, melanoma, thyroid cancer and lung cancer.

They discovered an over-diagnosis rate of 52% for all cancers, 35% for aggressive breast cancer.

What this work endorses, as did the Norwegian research before it, that maybe not all cancers need to be treated, some might grow too slowly to affect a patient and others may resolve on their own.

At the moment breast cancer is the second leading reason for death in girls, after lung cancer. As a result,yearly breast mammograms have become common for girls over 40, or anyone at heavy risk of developing this perilous, disfiguring condition.

Girls know that early detection of breast cancer can save lives, but that doesn’t mean going for that annual mammogram any less stressful or uncomfortable.

                                                                                                                                                            2011-05-10