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Article: Breast self-exams do not appear to reduce breast cancer deaths.
- Article from:
- NewsRx Health
- Article date:
- July 28, 2008
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It is a staple of women's health advice and visits to the OB/GYN: the monthly breast self-exam to check for lumps or other changes that might signal breast cancer. However, a review of recent studies says there is no evidence that self-exams actually reduce breast cancer deaths.
Instead, the practice may be doing more harm than good, since it led to almost twice as many biopsies that turned up no cancer in women who performed the self-exams, compared to women who did not do the exams.
"At present, screening by breast self-examination or physical examination [by a trained health worker] cannot be recommended," Jan Peter Kosters, Ph.D., and Peter ...