Diagnostic Mammogram - Why Is Government Opinion Changing?

To most women, the experience of being sent for a mammogram is already one of the worst feelings possible in life. Their trip to the radiologist can make them think of the expression Dead Man Walking - the phrase they use as gallows humor to describe a prisoner who has been sentenced to death, making his final walk to the executioner's chamber. The anxiety of the whole diagnostic mammogram experience, going for the procedure, and waiting to be told that they have no cancer, has become so intolerable to many women that they are beginning to rebel, to say in protest that they will not put up with any mammograms anymore. The government, perhaps trying to save money for the new proposed health-care bill, is beginning to take notice and to give women what they want.

The American Cancer Society's conventional stand in the matter has always been that women need to do self-examinations on their breasts by hand once in a way, and get a mammogram every year; the government's new guidelines to recommend on the other hand: that self-examinations are worse than useless, because no layperson ever has the right kind of training for this, and that diagnostic mammograms for women don't need to start until the age of 50, and then, they only need it once every two years. Women aren't sure what to do anymore; the Cancer Society says one thing, and the government says another. Perhaps this is what reverse psychology does. Women rebel when they are told they have no choice but to get breast screening every year starting at 40. But when they have another authority that gives them a way out, they just want all of a sudden to get the best treatment possible and to be safe than sorry.

There is an authority struggle in the cancer movement; the American Cancer Society is putting out its own strongly-worded recommendations that no matter what the government says, women should get their yearly diagnostic mammograms starting at 40. The government just feels that almost always, all the early scans, biopsies and the attendant fear, don't really seem to achieve anything. Women almost always end up testing normal. But it is just up to you to make up your own mind. America's Health Insurance Plans, a group that represents all the health insurance companies, says that they will continue to compensate anyone who wants the early diagnostic mammograms, because there is no clarity on which authority to follow.

How times change; 50 years ago, the Cancer Society made such a fuss over the circular motions women were supposed to use to do their self exams in the shower. But as with any home treatment or home exercise regimen, they just found out that the right technique can never be learned without extensive training. Take the Kegel exercises that women over 50 need to do, to keep incontinence at bay. Women have always tried, but have found that the clinical electronic stimulation machines have always done a much better job. The diagnostic mammograms are especially unnecessary for you because tumors in the breast of women don't just start on a path of runaway growth. They are slow to grow, and if the new two-year rule happened to leave one unnoticed for a few months, that would not really do any harm.

Diagnostic Mammogram - Why Is Government Opinion Changing?