An international team on Tuesday concluded that regular mammograms help in preventing deaths due to breast cancer and the number of deaths prevented increase over a period of time. This study was the longest study conducted on breast cancer screening. A total of 13,000 women were involved in the study, they belonged to two different communities in Sweden. The results observed were that 30% lesser women who were in the screening group died due to breast cancer. The results that were observed persisted for years. Finally after conducting the study for 29 years the researchers concluded that the number of women who were saved due to mammogram increased every year.
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This was told by Professor Stephen Duffy of Queen Mary, University of London. Professor Stephen’s study was published in the journal named Radiology. The results have proved breast cancer screening to be much more beneficial than was believed by the experts of the field, this was told by Dr. Stamatia Destounis who is a radiologist at Elizabeth Wende Breast Care in Rochester, New York. Dr. Stamatia was not involved in the study conducted. In the research the women were divided into two groups. One group of women was invited to receive breast cancer screening and the other group of women was treated in the usual conventional manner. Women between the age of 40 and 49 were screened after every two years and those between 50 and 74 were screened after every three years.
Professor Stephen said that in the study they found that for every 1000 women treated for 10 years with breast cancer screening, they could prevent 3 deaths. He also believed that these deaths would have most likely occurred in a period of ten years after the screening was begun. He also concluded that long term benefits are more than twice of those observed in short term. Among all types of cancer breast cancer is the second leading cause of deaths after lung cancer, due to cancer. Every year almost 50,000 deaths are caused due to breast cancer all over the world. Globally about 1.3 million women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year. Robert Smith, director of cancer screening at the American Cancer Society and one of the study’s authors said that if people are loosing their faith in mammograms for curing breast cancer then this study has provided very valuable results to prove the benefits of mammograms and bring back people’s faith to it.
