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Open breast biopsies performed much too frequently.

Article Excerpt
Too many U.S. women are having the more drastic, more expensive open biopsy once a mammogram detects an abnormality, according to a new study conducted at one academic medical center. This is diagnostic overkill given the facts that 80% of all such breast abnormalities eventually prove to be benign and that minimally invasive needle biopsy techniques have been available for years.

Overuse of the open biopsy means that women's health is unnecessarily compromised because the procedure can have serious complications. The development of scar tissue, for example, may inhibit the diagnosis of a future breast cancer. Incredibly, 1.6 million breast biopsies are performed yearly in the U.S. If this study is representative of the rest of the country, nearly 40% are open biopsies.

"Where's the Outrage?" asked surgeon Melvin J. Silverstein, MD. In the editorial that accompanied the new study, he reminded readers that the women's movement of the mid-1970s eventually put an end to the drastic one-step diagnosis/treatment procedure. Up to that era, women with a breast lump had to sign a consent form before going under anesthesia, allowing their surgeons to determine malignancy on the basis of a quick frozen biopsy and to do an immediate radical mastectomy...

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