“Some types of screening are a good idea — colorectal, for example,” said the lead author, Dr. Karsten Juhl Jorgensen, deputy director of the Nordic Cochrane Center. “But breast cancer has a biology that doesn’t lend itself to screening. Healthy women get a breast cancer diagnosis, and this has serious psychological consequences and well-known physical harms from unnecessary treatment. We’re really doing more harm than good.” The New York Times The Downside of Breast Cancer Screening
After reading the above NYT article, we wanted to explore both sides of the Breast Cancer Screening debate so we invited professionals and patients to weigh in with their opinions. We believe patients should be informed before making health care decisions and that includes reading evidence-based research reports as well as hearing personal narratives from patients who have gone through similar experiences.
Our intention with this series is to inform our readers about the facts surrounding breast cancer screening and the implications toward informed decision making.