Mammography Matters - An Op/Ed from Dorothy Gibbons

After almost 30 years of providing breast health services to more than 400,000 women, I can state the following without a single note of hesitation: Mammography matters.

That statement should be read as emphatically as possible within the confines of print.  I say it as CEO of The Rose, Houston’s “go to” resource for breast health care and the provider of much needed care in 25 counties.  When Dr. Dixie Melillo and I founded The Rose in 1986, we were clear about our nonprofit mission.  We had seen far too many women come for “treatment” in such late stages that all we could do was hold their hands until death took them.

Mammography matters. I say that to family, friends— any person I love— because I want their cancer found at its earliest possible stage and for them to have the best possible outcomes with the least amount of treatment.

Mammography matters. I say it as a woman who cannot fathom being told that something potentially malignant, such as DCIS, could be found in my breast and left there because it was deemed “acceptable since it’s non-invasive.” 

With my long history, I’m familiar with the uproar often caused when a “study” questions the value of an annual screening.  The British Medical Journal fanned the flames of debate last week when they published a report out of Canada questioning the value of a mammography screening and suggesting that a physical examination was adequate.

Mainstream media wasted no time in including rebuttals to the findings with experts noting that both the study’s information gathering and conclusions were “obviously flawed”. Unfortunately, inflammatory headlines often take on a life of their own in social media as they are retweeted and shared. Soon the headlines— not the facts—become the news.

The Canadian study immediately drew fire from the American College of Radiology (ACR) and the Society of Breast Imaging (SBI): 

"[The article] provides an incomplete picture of the costs versus benefit of breast cancer screening programs and is misleading. The costs of morbidity, lost income, treatment of metastatic disease, death, and other real financial implications associated with a diagnosis of advanced breast cancer due to less frequent screening were not considered in [this] analysis."

The groups also noted that if guidelines for less frequent mammograms were followed, approximately 6,500 to 10,000 additional women in the U.S. would die each year from breast cancer. One physician remarked, “We can't talk about how many dollars we'll save without also talking about how many lives we're going to lose.”

I agree.  We cannot place a price tag on a woman’s life. 

Until there is a cure, The Rose will continue to promote and provide mammograms.  We will continue to focus on the importance of preventive health screening.  We felt pretty helpless back in 1986 when insurance didn’t cover screening mammograms, few physicians recommended them and awareness about early detection was zilch. Then, as now, we tackled each challenge to access, and, one woman at a time, made mammograms affordable and accessible to any woman—insured or uninsured.

As a result, The Rose has seen a reduction in the stage of breast cancers diagnosed at our centers and through our mobile programs—especially among our uninsured population—mainly because we are returning to those populations and providing annual or semi-annual screening. 

How sad, that after nearly three decades, the controversy continues. With so many demands on their time and attention, women don’t need any reasons to delay screening; they need encouragement.

So, again I say, because women matter, mammography does indeed matter.

Dorothy Gibbons is CEO and Co-Founder of The Rose, the nonprofit breast health organization for southeast Texas which includes two imaging centers and a mobile fleet reaching 25 counties.