Re: Why do mammograms ...
Originally Posted by
Artangel
->
About 3 years ago, l had an X-ray on my jaw at the hospital not the dentist. Then not long after, an X-ray on my chest.
Soon after, l had a letter to go for a Mammogram. I was concerned that l was being exposed to too much radiation in a short time. .
Let's look at the figures:
Dental X-Ray is 0.005 mSv
Chest X-Ray is 0.1 mSv
Mammogram is 0.4 mSv
So in total you had about 0.505 mSv
On average a human gets 2.7 mSv of background radiation over the course of 1 year.
Thus you had there about 1/5th of an entire year's background radiation in whatever that short time was.
Really, the bigger issue with the Mammogram is it's utter unreliability. By having one at all, you are putting yourself in the mammogram lottery that ends up with 10 people in every 2000 being diagnosed with a cancer when they didn't need to and thus you risk being one of those people who the NHS will then dutifully set you on the pre-scripted conveyor belt of treatments. Biopses, drugs, radiation, possible surgery and/or mastectomy with all the psychological suffering that comes with it all.
The facts:
"for every 2000 women invited for screening throughout 10 years, one will avoid dying of breast cancer and 10 healthy women, who would not have been diagnosed if there had not been screening, will be treated unnecessarily. Furthermore, more than 200 women will experience important psychological distress including anxiety and uncertainty for years because of false positive findings."