[rhondalea]

Well, Pray, when you get to googling, the results are interesting and all over the place.

NCI cites a 20% false negative rate that it blames mostly on dense breast tissue. The report out of EBCC-2 (2000) cites radiologist error as the main cause of false negatives, with a different percentage rate that appears to be slightly less, but is not actually cited numerically (we are left to do the math from a single review), because the point was to demonstrate that a breast exam prior to mammogram cut the false negative rate by 11.5%.

The more you read, the more confusing the numbers and the reason for those numbers becomes.

For example, mammography gives its greatest benefit to women 80 years of age and older (!), whereas it is not so useful in women under 50. Younger women are alleged to have a higher false negative rate than older women because of their denser breast tissue. These are just two of the not very useful facts I picked up in PubMed and a couple of sites specific to radiologists, but they lead one to ask why there isn't a better way. Obviously, medicine hasn't quite figured out how to cost-effectively (always an issue) streamline diagnosis. Maybe someday.

The false positive rate is also high, and the effort to avoid false positives may account for some of the false negatives, but I couldn't find anyone actually tackling that issue head-on.

Right now, it's just discouraging. I have taken to telling everyone to have that mammogram but not to skip the annual exam or the monthly exam, and if they have any doubt at all, to demand extra testing.