MAMMOGRAPHY SCREENING

Mammography Screening

Mammography Screening

Introduction

Today breast cancer is the most common cancer in women and its frequency increases with age. Every woman can develop breast cancer even if no member of his family has been touched by this disease. There is still no way to prevent its occurrence. However, breast cancer detected early is easier to treat, causes less effects and can find a good quality of life after treatment. The early diagnosis of breast cancer, the current state of medical knowledge, cannot be done through screening mammography. The Ministry of Health and the National Health Fund (formerly Union of Sickness Funds) have together entered into a screening program for breast cancer also called "Mammography Program” in USA. There is a need to assess the positive and negative impact of the mammography. It needs to be seen whether it provides any benefit to the people or not. This is a cause of concern for all those women who needs to take precautionary steps for the detection of this disease. This concern creates a need for the research to be conducted on this issue. Therefore, all the issues and aspects related to Mammography will be discussed in detail.

Thesis Statement

The main purpose of the topic is to assess the positive and negative impact of Mammography for the people.

Research Questions

The research questions of the topic will be important in addressing the positive and negative impact of the Mammography Screening. The research questions for the topic are:

1.What are the differences in the false-negative and false-positive results in screening mammograms?

2.How accurate is mammography?

3.Do the positive effects outweigh the negative effects in mammograms?

Discussion of the topic

A mammogram is an x-ray of the breasts, standing up on a device designed for this purpose. This is a simple and quick to detect, even before the onset of symptoms, abnormalities of small sizes that can appear in the breast. These anomalies, which are not detectable during palpation of the breasts and not visible, could be a signal of a possible cancer. Early detection of breast cancer through mammography also means that more women can be cured from the disease, while preserving the breast. This is possible, because if the cancer is detected at an early stage and has not had time to germinate in the adjacent tissues or to metastasize, it can easily be excised without the need to remove the entire organ - mastectomy surgery (Andersen, Smith, Meischke, Bowen & Urban, 2003).

However, many researchers state that Mammography is not the ideal method for diagnosis of breast diseases. Sometimes the tumor changes may not occur in the bulk of the normal breast tissue. Such results of mammography are called "false-negative". To overcome these effects, mammography combined with many other methods of cancer diagnostics. In addition, mammography has its drawbacks, as this method is associated with X-ray irradiation, which in itself, though not a particularly significant threat to the health of the woman, but it is not safe. In addition, in the process of mammography breast patients are usually ...