Doctors React to Breast Self-Exam Study

Oct. 3 -- One year ago Kelly Larkin-Holmes was doing a regular breast self-exam when she noticed an unusual lump. She went to her doctor, who did a biopsy and determined that the lump was cancerous.

That same month, the 33-year-old Seattle resident's mother Diane Larkin, 57, of Kent, Wash., noticed a similar lump in her own breast. Her doctor encouraged her to wait six months before doing anything about it, but after four she insisted on a biopsy. She had cancer, too.

Doctors are encouraged over the women's chances of survival after the chemotherapy and radiation treatments both have received.

Cases like these have led many family physicians to plan on continuing recommendations of regular breast self-exams, regardless of a recent study saying that they may not improve the survival rate for women with breast cancer.

The study published this week in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute followed more than 266,000 women from China who were randomly assigned to give themselves breast self-examinations, or BSE. Ten to 11 years later, the women who received instruction showed no decrease in mortality rates.

The study also hinted that these women were at a greater risk of having more biopsies, which could increase the number of false positives. This has the potential for causing the patient undue stress and unnecessary medical intervention.

However, for Larkin and Larkin-Holmes, they feel that the self-exams had nothing but a positive effect for them — in helping with an early diagnosis.

They also think that the self-exam was even more critical for Larkin-Holmes since she is too young to receive annual mammograms. "To me it is just wrong to say not to do breast self-exams," said Larkin, "because that is the only way for young women to know that they have a problem."

Doctors Remain Encouraged

"All of us have a story or two of a woman who found her own lump and is still alive," said Dr. Patricia Clancy, a family practice physician in Concord, N.H. "So for that reason, I am reluctant to abandon these methods without something to replace them."