Breast exams considered harmful.
June 26, 2001 3:54 AM   Subscribe

Breast exams considered harmful. Some Canadian researchers claim that teaching women to conduct their own breast exams does no good as they are more likely to encounter benign lumps, suffer undue anxiety and endure unnecessary surgery. (An associated article can be found here).

"Many breast tumours are found by women themselves, even in highly screened populations. However, in women regularly performing BSE, many self-detected tumours are found incidentally, not during self-examination. In one study, only 7.6% of women with breast tumours who were practising regular BSE actually detected the tumour by means of self-examination. In addition, tumours developing between screens in some age groups (e.g., 50–69) may be inherently more aggressive and thus may not be influenced by slightly earlier detection with BSE. "

So BSE works for only 7.6%? That's a good enough percentage for me, especially as the costs of BSE campaigns is pretty trivial compared to other public health measure.
posted by maudlin (4 comments total)
 
If this was researched in Britain, I somehow don't think that Breast Self-Examination would be the used phrase. BSE has too many other connotations.

How about Observation of Own Breasts (OOB)?
posted by ajbattrick at 5:33 AM on June 26, 2001


But OOB could also stand for Observation of Others' Breasts and we Canadians find that so last year.
posted by maudlin at 5:49 AM on June 26, 2001


What the ladies need is a dispassionate, cool, calm and collected hand to check for the lumps.
The doctor is in.
posted by dong_resin at 7:43 AM on June 26, 2001


Could somebody explain to me what this means?

However, in women regularly performing BSE, many self-detected tumours are found incidentally, not during self-examination.

How is a self-detected tumour found incidentally and NOT during a self-examination? You just happen to brush up against your own breast and find a tumour but you weren't doing an examination?
posted by witchstone at 10:08 AM on June 26, 2001


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