According to a recent study in Radiology, women older than age 75 may still derive benefits from mammography screening. Led by researchers at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health and Community Medicine, investigators performed a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act-compliant, prospective cohort study with a waiver of informed consent in patients who had primary breast cancer and were aged 75 years or older. The 1162 women represented had stage 0 to IV disease between 1990 and 2011 and had been identified and tracked with a registry database.
Information in patient charts from the time of diagnosis that was accessed included stage, treatment, outcomes, and whether the disease was detected by the patient, a physician, or on mammography. Disease-specific survival rates were compared using Kaplan-Meier estimation. Among the cohort, mammographic detection of…
