November 19, 2009 – 10:24 am
Reaction to the recent study suggesting breast cancer screening leads to significant over-diagnosis and unnecessary treatment has been, as you might expect, quite mixed.
Some of the most critical comments have come from breast cancer consumer advocates – overtones, perhaps, of how prostate cancer consumer groups have sometimes reacted to evidence about the potential harms of [...]
November 13, 2009 – 12:18 pm
The study investigating over-diagnosis in breast cancer screening, as previously described at Croakey, is attracting widespread interest and discussion.
Andrew Penman, Chief Executive Officer of Cancer Council NSW, has been considering the complexities of the issues involved, and writes:
November 12, 2009 – 2:59 pm
What are the implications of the breast cancer study reported below by Associate Professor Alex Barratt?
Croakey has asked a range of individuals and groups to respond, and will post their comments as they land.
November 12, 2009 – 12:23 pm
Croakey is old enough to remember the days when anyone who raised questions about the potential for mammographic screening for breast cancer to have a downside was treated with all the derision and scorn usually reserved for dangerous heretics.
Thankfully, the debate has matured quite a bit since those days. We are now hearing a somewhat [...]
October 22, 2009 – 6:56 pm
The New York Times, as previously mentioned, is reporting a shift in screening policy at the the American Cancer Society, which is now saying that the benefits of early detection of many cancers, especially breast and prostate, have been “overstated”.
“We don’t want people to panic,” Dr Otis Brawley, the Society’s chief medical officer told the [...]
October 21, 2009 – 7:37 pm
Gina Kolata has just published a story in the New York Times that is going to create international waves which will be felt for some time.
She reports that the American Cancer Society – a longtime advocate for most cancer screening – “is now saying that the benefits of detecting many cancers, especially breast and prostate, [...]
October 7, 2009 – 8:24 am
Further to the recent Croakey posts on a new study evaluating the initial impact of bowel cancer screening, one of the study’s authors has sent in her take on the results.
Dr Sumitra Ananda, a cancer specialist in Melbourne, is hoping the Federal Government acts on the new findings.
She writes:
“The recent report in the MJA [...]
October 6, 2009 – 11:22 am
As previously mentioned at Croakey, the latest Medical Journal of Australia has published a study examining the impact of the national bowel cancer screening program. It suggests that the program may be more likely to benefit the better off.
Professor Mark Harris, from the UNSW Centre for Primary Health Care and Equity, says there is enough [...]
October 5, 2009 – 5:08 pm
Do cancer screening programs increase the health gap between the well-to-do and the not-so-well-off?
That is one worrying implication from a study just published in the Medical Journal of Australia.
Researchers sought to examine the initial impact of the national bowel cancer screening program which offers faecal occult blood testing to those aged 55 or 65.
They reviewed [...]
October 2, 2009 – 11:45 am
If you missed Catalyst on ABC Television last night, there were two excellent reports that are well worth taking the time to watch.
This investigation of the prostate cancer screening debate was much more helpful than the sort of media coverage that we so often see of this fraught issue (and which I’ve been guilty of [...]
