Impaired women get unneeded screening

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 18 (UPI) -- Elderly women who are cognitively impaired get unneeded screening mammography, U.S. researchers say.

Lead author Kala Mehta, a geriatrics researcher at University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues say the study, which involved 2,131 elderly women, found 18 percent of severely cognitively impaired women received screening mammography, compared with 45 percent of women with normal cognitive status.

However, severely cognitively impaired women who were married and had a net worth of more than $100,000 had a screening rate of 47 percent.

"Screening" mammography is imaging conducted to detect masses that are not causing any symptoms but may grow to cause symptoms in the future, as opposed to mammography conducted after a suspicious mass has been detected on physical exam, Mehta says.

"Even a screening rate of 18 percent may be considered too high,'' Mehta says in a statement. To benefit from screening mammography, "a woman must have a life expectancy of at least four to five years, while a severely cognitively impaired women in this study had a life expectancy of 3.3 years on average -- otherwise, the potential harms are likely to outweigh the benefits.''