Panel: Mammograms Lead to Overtreatment

Breast cancer screening of women over 50 saves lives, but leads to overtreatment of many more women, an expert group says. For every life saved, the group says, 3 women will be treated for cancers that never would have harmed them. The United Kingdom’s health department and Cancer Research U.K. sponsored the study. The expert panel added together the numbers from 11 prior studies. They concluded that screening of women in their 50s reduces breast cancer deaths by 20%. They looked more closely at 3 studies that randomly divided women into 2 groups. One group was invited to regular screening, and the other group was not. Based on these studies and other information, the expert group estimated overtreatment rates. In the UK, women over 50 are invited to have screening mammograms every 3 years.