This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on Web of Science (4)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

A Rational Approach

Myron Moskowitz, MD

JAMA. 1978;240(17):1898-1899.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

REDUCED-DOSE mammography is an important adjunctive clinical tool for detecting and diagnosing small breast cancers. Mammography, aggressively used, will increase the detection of minimal breast cancers substantially. On the other hand, improperly used mammography may add unnecessarily to the patient's body burden of radiation and delay diagnosis of palpable masses.

How can we avoid adding unnecessarily to the patient's body burden of radiation? Basically, this can be accomplished by (1) controlling the radiation dose and (2) selecting appropriate patients for mammographic examination.

Today the average annual dose absorbed in the midbreast for two-view mammography can be reduced to 1 rad or less. At this level, lifetime annual mammography of a 35-year-old woman could possibly increase her risk of cancer from an expected spontaneous risk of 8% to a total risk of 8.3%. This risk estimate is based on extrapolation from high-dose data,^1,2 and there is a distinct statistical possibility . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Breast Cancer Detection Center, Department of Radiology, University of Cincinnati Medical Center, Cincinnati.

Footnotes
Reprint requests to Breast Cancer Detection Center, Department of Radiology, University of Cincinnati Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH 45267 (Dr Moskowitz).

Edited by Z. Danilevicius, MD, Senior Editor.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?