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Comment by Aulig | Hacker News Reader

I looked into this recently. From what I can tell, no study could show a reduction in deaths from doing mammograms. This is because they detect many cancers that would go away on their own thus unnecessarily exposing you to chemotherapy which brings other health risks. A good starting point on this topic is this video: https://youtu.be/_sg14En-Z7A I was doubtful about the validity of that video at first, but everything he says is backed up by studies.

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https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33141657/

"Long-term follow-up of the UK Age RCT" "There was a statistically significant 25% reduction in mortality from breast cancers diagnosed during the intervention phase at 10 years' follow-up"

This is specifically for an annual screening of women 40-49yrs. The reason why this article was written is because there is a scientific debate about whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages in this age group. I don't think this article really settles this discussion. When you look at the CI you'll see it's rather big and the upper bound is only slightly below 1.

But this is about screening of rather young women. Most established screening programs start at an age of 50. Still young. :-)

Thank you.

Cancer usually doesn't go away just like that. There is a chance in situ tumours or benigne tumours "go away" and there is some discussion about what you should do with this type of tumour. Not every tumour is cancer.

Anyway, even with cancer you can of course bet on dying of another cause before the cancer gets you and thus ignore medical therapy. Some people win this bet ... somehow.

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