For the study, Mei-Sing Ong of the Boston Children’s Hospital Informatics Program and Ken Mandl, Harvard Medical School professor and Boston Children’s Hospital Informatics Program faculty member, looked at the costs from false-positive mammograms and breast cancer overdiagnoses among more than 700 women ages 40-59, between 2011 and 2013.
The study found that the average expenditures for each false-positive mammogram, invasive breast cancer, and ductal carcinoma in situ, the most common type of non-invasive breast cancer, in the 12 months following diagnosis were $852, $51,837 and $12,369, respectively. This translates to a national cost of $4 billion each year.
“The costs associated with false-positive mammograms and breast cancer overdiagnoses appear to be much higher than previously documented,” the authors wrote. “Screening has the potential to save lives. However, the economic impact of false-positive mammography results and breast cancer overdiagnoses must be considered in the debate about the appropriate populations for screening.”
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