The idea of a 2 Minute Breast Exam started over 20 years ago with two researchers, Leo Mahoney and Adele Csima, in Toronto, Canada. They timed how long it took them to complete the palpation step of a clinical breast exam. They found that it took about 2 minutes. Their study is the basis of why this website adopts 2 minutes as the basic minimum that every woman deserves every year.
There are persons who disagree and feel that 2 minutes is too short a time. These persons advocate a technique that takes about five minutes for each breast. However, it is unlikely that such lengthy exams will ever be done routinely. Furthermore, in follow up of clinicians who have been trained to do the longer exams (a total of 10 minutes when both breasts are examined), the clinicians actually do fewer breast exams on fewer patients. What may be happening is that with the slower technique, the task becomes so daunting that clinicians don’t even start.
Fortunately, as Mahoney and Csima noted, you don’t really need more than about 2 minutes.
Click here to view a 2 minute breast exam
In presentations, when women are shown a video of a CBE as short as 2 minutes, only about one in five says that she has had a breast exam that is even that thorough. More »
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