“Up to 1,000 women will have at least one 'false alarm,' about half of whom will undergo biopsy.”
He added that screening mammography has become a measure of health care performance, but “the time has come for it to stop being used as an indicator of the quality of our health care system.”
Instead, the study findings by Dr. Kalager and colleagues “help confirm that the decision to undergo screening mammography is, in fact, a close call.”
H. GILBERT WELCH, M.D., M.P.H., is a professor of medicine and community and family medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice in Lebanon, N.H. Dr. Welch made his comments in an editorial accompanying the study (N. Engl. J. Med. 2010;363:1276-8). He had no relevant financial disclosures.