Obese women play cancer rouletteMarch 17, 2009Obese women may be putting themselves at greater risk of breast cancer by not undergoing regular screening. According to new research by Dr. Nisa Maruthur and her team from The John Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, USA, seriously obese women are significantly less likely to say they have undergone a recent mammography than normal weight women, especially if they are white. Maruthur's findings are published online this week in Springer's Journal of General Internal Medicine. Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death among women in the US. Mammography screening has been proven to reduce the number of deaths from breast cancer; current guidelines recommend that women over the age of 40 undergo a mammography every couple of years. Obesity is also an important risk factor for both the development of, and death from, postmenopausal breast cancer. Maruthur and colleagues conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of 17 studies comprising over 276,000 participants, to look at whether overweight and obese women are less likely to have had a recent mammography than normal weight women. They also looked at the differences in mammography take-up between white and black obese women in three of the studies. They found that severely obese women were 20 percent less likely to have had a recent mammography than normal weight women. However, this was not the case among black women. The authors highlight a number of reasons why obese women may not be undergoing breast cancer screening, including a delay in taking up medical care because of poor self-esteem and body image, embarrassment, a perceived lack of respect from their health care providers and unwanted weight loss advice. According to the authors, obesity may be a marker for sub-optimal health behavior in general, of which mammography is simply one element. The authors also suggest that there are racial differences in obesity-related body image which may explain the difference in take-up of mammography between white and black women. The authors conclude that "the main implication of our study is that a lack of routine screening mammography may explain some of the increased breast cancer mortality in obese postmenopausal women. Clinicians should be aware of this disparity in evaluating their own practices." Reference 1. Maruthur NM et al (2009). Obesity and mammography: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of General Internal Medicine, DOI 10.1007/s11606-009-0939-3 Springer |
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| Related Mammography Current Events and Mammography News Articles Researcher: 'Optical biopsy' for breast cancer increasingly accurate But women may not have to endure the medical costs, stress and potential complications that accompany such invasive biopsies forever. A University of Florida biomedical engineering researcher is making progress on an "optical biopsy" that has the potential to determine whether growths are cancerous without ever puncturing the skin. URI research couple's method targets cancerous tumors Two University of Rhode Island associate professors, biophysicists Yana Reshetnyak and Oleg Andreev, have discovered a technology that can detect cancerous tumors and deliver treatment to them without the harming the healthy cells surrounding them, thereby significantly reducing side effects. Study finds delay in follow-up among African-American women receiving abnormal breast finding A new analysis has identified a significant delay in follow-up times among African-American women after the finding of a suspicious breast abnormality. New data: Hospital imaging centers poised to pull back, hitting patients hardest in rural areas Survivors and patients with cancers and heart disease, along with patient advocate organizations and physicians, today urged policymakers to enhance early diagnosis of deadly diseases by preserving access to advanced imaging, such as MRI and CT scans, in final health care reform legislation. Breast tenderness during hormone replacement therapy linked to elevated cancer risk Women who developed new-onset breast tenderness after starting estrogen plus progestin hormone replacement therapy were at significantly higher risk for developing breast cancer than women on the combination therapy who didn't experience such tenderness, according to a new UCLA study. Breast cancer patients with high risk gene diagnosed 6 years earlier than generation before Women with a deleterious gene mutation are diagnosed with breast cancer six years earlier than relatives of the previous generation who also had the disease and/or ovarian cancer, according to new research from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Researchers fine-tune Diffuse Optical Tomography for breast cancer screening Clemson University researchers in collaboration with researchers at the University of Bremen, Germany, are working to make the physical pain and discomfort of mammograms a thing of the past, while allowing for diagnostic imaging eventually to be done in a home setting. Surgeons' unanimous consensus: Needle biopsy is gold standard for breast cancer diagnosis A special report published in the October issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons indicates that an alarming 35% of initial diagnostic breast biopsies in the United States are still being done using unnecessary open surgical techniques. Researchers believe hormone therapy should not be stopped prior to mammograms Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) are recommending that menopausal women on hormone therapy (HT) continue their treatment prior to having their annual mammogram screenings. Research needed to learn which DCIS patients may be candidates for less invasive therapy Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), the most common non-invasive lesion of the breast, presents unique challenges for patients and providers largely because the natural course of the untreated disease is not well understood. More Mammography Current Events and Mammography News Articles |
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