It has been found by researchers that breast cancer screening or mammograms benefits are overestimated to a large extent. As per scientists, routine breast screening is not that helpful in saving lives.

It was concluded in earlier research that mammography programs are able to reduce chances of death from breast cancer by up to 25%. But, according to recent data, those programs can lessen chances of death as a result of breast cancer by below 10%.

According to David L. Katz, founding director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center, the over-diagnosis from mammograms leads to more complications rather than good. He wrote in his blog for U.S. News & World Report that they had been thinking that breast cancer screening, together with self-exam, professional exam and especially mammography, was quite effective.

According to him, “Mammography is a far more muddled issue than we would wish, finding cancer early at times as intended, but also generating a large number of false positives, and perhaps even at times suggesting treatment is needed when it is not”.

It has been told by experts on behalf of the University of Strathclyde and Kings College London that the earlier studies did not pay attention to the vast progress in breast cancer treatment. The progress in this direction is the main factor that contributed to the rise in survival rates among patients who develop the disease.

A Harvard University study that was conducted on 16 million women suggested that breast cancer screening leads to a number of false diagnoses of the condition.