
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 24, 1993                   TAG: 9311240149
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

MANY MAMMOGRAMS UNNEEDED, STUDY SAYS

In a groundbreaklng new study sure to inflame an ongoing debate, California researchers have recommended that women under the age of 50 need not undergo routine mammography screening when they have no symptoms or family history of breast cancer.

The study of nearly 32,000 asymptomatic women 30 and older found that although women under 50 have a significant rate of abnormal mammograms, far fewer actually have cancer compared to women over 50 with abnormal mammograms.

The report is the first to quantify how many women with abnormal readings actually have cancer after a diagnostic work-up - usually a biopsy - is completed, said the study's lead author, Dr. Karla Kerlikowske, an assistant clinical professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. Mammography only suggests the possibility of cancer, Kerlikowske noted.

"Our data indicate there are a lot of false positives with mammography. You have to consider the anxiety of having that [false positive] and all the procedures that go along with it," she says.

There is universal agreement on the need for yearly mammography in women 50 and older and among younger women with a family history of breast cancer.

Kerlikowske said she and her colleagues undertook the research because of concern about the number of women under 50 who were told to get a mammography and then became anxious when the reading was abnormal.

by CNB