All Articles on Breast Cancer

• ‘Glad you’re listening’: SIMBA study brings patients’ voices to the fore

  For the three million women in the United States who’ve survived breast cancer, difficult health care choices come with the territory. But even after successful treatment, an important question lingers: Should they consider magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in addition to mammography for ongoing breast cancer screening, or “surveillance”?
• High-risk women get breast MRI—but room remains for improvement

  A large national study in JAMA Internal Medicine has found that the rate of women receiving breast MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) nearly tripled from 2005 to 2009: from four to 11 exams per 1,000 women.
• Dr. Evette Ludman reflects on her career, her diagnosis, and the GHRI endowment

  One year after GHRI Research Associate Evette Ludman, PhD, coached nurse navigators to help cancer patients with difficult treatment decisions, she discovered the work’s value in a very personal way.
• Biennial mammograms best for ages 50–74, even with dense breasts

  Screening for breast cancer every two years appears just as beneficial as yearly mammograms for women age 50–74, with significantly fewer “false positives”—even for women whose breasts were dense or who used hormone therapy for menopause.
• Biennial and yearly mammograms give older women same benefit

  Among older women, getting a mammogram every two years was just as beneficial as getting a mammogram annually, and led to significantly fewer false-positive results, according to a Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium (BCSC) study including patients and researchers from Group Health. The national study of more than 140,000 women between ages 66 and 89 is in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
• Breast cancer screening: A trio of innovators shines light on the evidence women need

  Serious questions remain about how best to balance screening’s benefits with its potential harms, including false-positive test results, overdiagnosis leading to invasive treatment for non-life-threatening conditions, and repeated exposure to radiation.
• Risk factors may inform breast cancer screening

  hoosing when to start regular breast cancer screening is a complicated decision for individual women and their providers. For most women, increasing age is the biggest risk factor for breast cancer, which is much more common at age 60 than at 40. But two new articles on other risk factors may inform guidelines and clinical practice about screening mammography from age 40 to 49.