|
 What's more, the increased anxiety appears to
dissipate within a year, write the researchers in JAMA Internal
Medicine.
"We provide one more piece of evidence that women need to be well
informed of the outcome of screenings," Anna Tosteson told Reuters
Health. "Especially women 40 to 49 (years old) need to think about
how they would feel about having a false-positive mammogram."
Tosteson is the study's lead author from the Geisel School of
Medicine at Dartmouth College in Lebanon, New Hampshire.
False-positives occur when the results of a mammogram suggest
possible breast cancer, when in reality no cancer exists. Typically
the initial positive test is followed by additional screenings or a
more invasive biopsy to look for cancer.
There is about a 61 percent chance that a woman who undergoes yearly
mammograms over a decade will have a false-positive during that
time, according to Dr. Kurt Kroenke, who wrote an editorial
accompanying the new study.
Kroenke is from the Regenstrief Institute, Inc, a nonprofit
healthcare research organization in Indianapolis.
Aside from the bother of having additional tests, some policymakers
and medical organizations also take into account how much anxiety a
false-positive may cause a woman when making recommendations about
who should get screened.
For the new study, the researchers used information from 1,028 women
who participated in a trial that tested the reliability of a new
type of mammogram.
They compared 534 cancer-free women whose mammograms initially
suggested breast cancer to 494 women whose screenings were negative
from the start.
The women were interviewed after the first mammogram — but typically
before they were cleared of a cancer diagnosis — and then a year
later.
Immediately after their first mammogram, the women who received
false-positive results had more anxiety than those who received a
clean bill of health.
On a scale from 20 to 80, with higher scores indicating increased
anxiety, women in the false-positive group scored 35, on average,
compared to 33 among women in the negative group.
The scores then leveled off to 34 and 33, respectively, after a
year.
[to top of second column] |
There was no difference between the groups on a measure of
overall health.
The women in the false-positive group also reported being just as
likely to undergo another breast screening within the next two years
as those who tested negative. Roughly 93 percent in both groups
planned to get screened again in that interval.
About 26 percent of women who had a false-positive said they were
more likely to undergo future screening after their experience,
however. That compared to about 14 percent of the negative group.
In his editorial, Kroenke said some of the findings are still
concerning.
For example, more women in the false-positive group compared to the
negative group reported moderate anxiety. Those women were also more
likely to report discomfort with any follow-up care.
"We must simply acknowledge that diagnostic tests, like medications,
can have adverse effects," Kroenke writes.
He adds that other surveys designed to pick up anxiety associated
with cancer diagnoses may be more sensitive to detect stress during
a possible cancer diagnosis.
Tosteson said the authors were more interested in the effects of a
false-positive mammogram result on women's overall health.
"I think there does need to be further study in this area, but for
the purposes of what we were trying to learn we used the right
measures," she said.
 ___
Source: http://bit.ly/1eXF2gd
and http://bit.ly/1rg8kGI
JAMA Internal Medicine, online April 21,
2014.
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
