Jan 17, 2014 – Treatment Advances

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ANCHOR LEAD: DO ADVANCES IN THE TREATMENT OF BREAST CANCER OBVIATE THE NEED FOR MAMMOGRAMS? ELIZABETH TRACEY REPORTS

There’s no question the treatment of breast cancer has improved a great deal, such that some people advance the opinion that regular mammography isn’t required, especially in light of recent studies calling the positive impact of this screening into question. Ben Park, a breast cancer expert at Johns Hopkins, frames the debate this way.

PARK: What is the end goal of what we’re trying to do? If we’re really trying to catch breast cancers early or even reduce truly invasive breast cancer, I think that that for me would be a goal to try to achieve. I still think there’s benefit of catching breast cancers early, if you ask most women they’d probably really rather never get a diagnosis of true breast cancer or to have a situation where we say, wow, we caught it so early that we take it out and you don’t need anything else. :26

So for now, Park says he does ascribe to the notion that yearly mammograms for most women are helpful. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.