WASHINGTON – Many women deal with the anxiety of a false positive mammogram, then the relief of learning the breast screening for cancer was wrong.
Now there’s another scientific twist to consider.
A Danish study finds that women who had false positive breast cancer screenings had a 67 percent higher risk of developing breast cancer later in life.
A doctor tells the reasons behind the link are unclear, but women who have a family history of breast cancer are more likely to have a false positive.
“It’s so subjective,” Dr. Susan Love, president of the , told ABC 91Å·ÃÀ¼¤Çé, referring to a radiologist’s decision to follow up a suspicious mammogram with a biopsy. “If you had a mother with breast cancer, the radiologist and … probably you yourself would be more aggressive in following up any slightly suspicious abnormality in a screening mammogram.”
The study appears in the .
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends mammograms every two years for women between the ages of 50 and 74.
91Å·ÃÀ¼¤Çé’s Mitchell Miller contributed to this report. Follow and on Twitter.
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