Mercury News Editorial: Simple rule on mammogram reports can save lives
Share this pageThere’s one thing worse than a medical report that says you have cancer. That’s a report that says everything’s peachy keen—even though the procedure couldn’t really tell.
Soquel resident Amy Colton got caught in this trap. Despite annual all-clear mammograms, she suddenly found she had advanced breast cancer. Only then did she learn that she is among millions of women whose tissue is too dense for a mammogram to detect a small tumor.
And she’s a registered nurse.
Colton won state Sen. Joe Simitian’s “There Oughta Be a Law” contest, and he introduced SB 173 to require that patients be told if they have dense tissue. Then, they and their doctors—who already get this information routinely—can decide whether to have further screening.
View the full story (San Jose Mercury News)