Breast Self-Exam Doesn't Reduce Mortality

Oct. 1 -- Breast self-examination is commonly taught as a way for women to detect breast cancer, but new research says cancer detection may be best taken out of their hands — because the exams don't help, and may even hurt.

A study appearing Wednesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute finds no reduction in breast-cancer mortality for women who perform breast self-exams.

The study examined more than 266,000 women from Shanghai, China, who were randomly assigned to a group taught breast self-examination, or BSE, in which women learn to feel for suspicious changes in their breasts, or to a control group with no such instruction.

"The women in the instruction group did not find their tumors when they were any smaller or at a less-advanced stage than women in the control group that did not get the intensive breast self-exam instructions," lead author Dr. David Thomas of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle told ABCNEWS' Jackie Judd.

Not only was there no reduction in overall mortality in the instruction group after 10 to 11 years of follow-up, but there was the suggestion that women who routinely check their breasts are at greater risk of undergoing more biopsies. More biopsies mean increased potential for false positive results, which can result in increased anxiety and excessive interventions, the study said.

This is not the first study failing to find benefits of BSE.

"It really fits many of our biases, which is that routine BSE has never been shown to effectively reduce mortality, even in retrospective studies. It does not surprise me that BSE is not very helpful at all," said Dr. Daniel Hayes, clinical director of the breast oncology program at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center in Ann Arbor.

If It Ain’t Broke …

So does this mean that women should stop their self-exams, or at the very least, stop feeling guilty if they haven't been doing them?

For some experts, the answer is yes. Dr. Susan Love, author of Doctor Susan Love's Breast Book, has always doubted the value of self-detection. She says this report is long overdue.