Just how often do mammograms turn up false positive results? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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No woman likes to undergo mammography, and when results seem to show a problem when there isn’t one, many will choose to give subsequent studies a miss. That’s according to a recent study Kimmel Cancer Center director William Nelson at Johns Hopkins describes.

Nelson: In younger women it turns out that some like 10 to 12% of them will end up having a false positive. One way to look at it is if you participate in yearly screening for a decade or more, more than half the women at some point will have something suspicious identified and they'll be asked to return have another image or have a biopsy. When that happens are the women likely to resume screenings, be less likely to come back for additional interval screening than someone who has not had that experience?  :30

Nelson says the rate of women turning away from regular mammography after a false positive might be improved if additional tests were offered right away rather than requiring additional visits. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.