Tuesday, December 21, 2010

A Doctor’s Mammogram Mission Turns Personal - NYTimes.com

Dr. Marisa Weiss scheduled her mammogram this spring, just as she does every year. She had just turned 51, and after having annual scans for a decade, she knew what to expect: her dense breast tissue made reading the films difficult — "like looking for a polar bear in a blizzard" — and the technician would probably ask her to sit for a few extra views.

This year was different. After Dr. Weiss went home, she got a call from the doctor's office.

"They said, 'Can you come back, now?' " she recalled. "I said I'd prefer not to, and they said, 'Are you sure?' And I realized at that moment that it was more serious."

Dr. Weiss, who soon learned that she had an invasive Stage 1cancer in her left breast, is not just any physician. A radiation oncologist and a specialist in breast cancer, she founded a popular Web site, breastcancer.org, for women seeking comprehensive information about the disease, and she considers herself a woman with a mission. She sees patients three days a week, but she devotes four days a week to the site, which draws millions of visitors from 250 countries each year. She is writing her third book on breast cancer for a general audience.

A year ago, when a federal task force issued new guidelines relaxing the recommendations for mammography screening, Dr. Weiss was one of their fiercest critics. Mammograms aren't perfect, she said at the time, but they save lives. Now she says one may have saved hers.

In the annals of medicine, Dr. Weiss's story is just that: a story, an individual experience of the kind scientists dismiss as anecdotal, no reason to rethink policy. But it underscores the lingering, uncomfortable questions about when and how often to undergo breast cancer screening, and how to balance the benefits of early diagnosis with the harms of mammography — including false positive results that can lead to unnecessary biopsies and overtreatment.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/health/21cancer.html?ref=health