Breast cancer screening is under scroutiny by the UK study

United Kingdom – A new study suggests that thousands of women are being wrongly diagnosed with breast cancer each year.

The report concluded that healthy patients are being “over diagnosed” by doctors, which is resulting in needless surgeries and chemotherapy treatment.

The study was published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine by Professor Peter Gotzsche of the Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen.  He accuses the government of not mentioning the drawbacks of screenings for cancer.

Breast cancer screenings save over 1,200 lives a year, but the study shows that some women with slight lesions in their milk ducts are receiving more treatment than what may be necessary.

“Each year 7,000 women in the UK receive unnecessary breast cancer treatment because of overdiagnosis,” Gotszche wrote.

The NHS Cancer Screening Programme, which claims to have detected over 117,000 cancers, disputes the report.

“Numerous independent studies have shown breast cancer screening reduces mortality,” Professor Julietta Patnick of the NHS told Sky News.  “For every 400 women screened regularly by the NHS Breast Screening Programme over a 10-year period, one woman fewer will die from breast cancer than would have died without screening,” she added.