JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association
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Biography Historical Article
Mr Waxman went to Washington: congressman an architect of health laws for 4 decades.
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Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths among US women. Mammography screening may be associated with reduced breast cancer mortality but can also cause harm. Guidelines recommend individualizing screening decisions, particularly for younger women. ⋯ To maximize the benefit of mammography screening, decisions should be individualized based on patients' risk profiles and preferences. Risk models and decision aids are useful tools, but more research is needed to optimize these and to further quantify overdiagnosis. Research should also explore other breast cancer screening strategies.
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Guidelines recommend individualizing screening mammography decisions for women aged 75 years and older. However, little pragmatic guidance is available to help counsel patients. ⋯ For women with less than a 10-year life expectancy, recommendations to stop screening mammography should emphasize increased potential harms from screening and highlight health promotion measures likely to be beneficial over the short term. For women with a life expectancy of more than 10 years, deciding whether potential benefits of screening outweigh harms becomes a value judgment for patients, requiring a realistic understanding of screening outcomes.