UPPSALA, Sweden, March 11 (UPI) -- A Swedish researcher said breast self-examination is not an alternative to mammography and should not be recommended to detect cancer.
The comments were intended for the European Breast Cancer Conference on March 16, but the story was leaked before the planned release date.
Lars Holmberg of the Regional Oncologic Centre in Uppsala was writing in response to another professor's nine-year, randomized, controlled trial of 100,000 Russian women, which found even though they had been taught to examine their breasts correctly for lumps, there was no reduction in deaths from breast cancer.
Further, women who regularly conducted self-exams consulted doctors more often for benign lesions, leading to unnecessary surgical biopsies and increased anxiety, Holmberg said in a statement.
"While women should be aware of changes in their breasts, just as they should take note of any other unusual signs elsewhere in the body, it is worrying that (breast self-exams are) still being touted as an alternative to mammographic screening," he wrote.
