Many physicians and nurses have stopped offering clinical breast exams because mammograms are better. Mammograms are better, but mammograms miss cancer, too.
Mammograms alone miss about 15 percent of breast cancers! This means more than 30,000 breast cancers a year are missed by mammograms in the United States alone.
If a woman could only have one test, she would probably do better to choose a mammogram, and skip the CBE. However, in almost every situation, there is no reason that a woman cannot have both a mammogram and a clinical breast exam. This is what should be done for most women.
Clinical breast examination is the basis of finding breast cancers that are missed by mammograms.
A recent study reviewed the steps in the diagnosis of 1,401 breast cancers at three different hospitals. In this study, most of the women also had mammograms. Seventeen percent of the women who cancer had a negative mammogram at the time of diagnosis. This was a mammogram that was correctly read, and still did not show the cancer. Their mammogram was not able to detect their breast cancer. CBE was the way these cancers were found.
Many clinicians have stopped offering routine clinical breast examinations, so women need to request CBE for themselves.
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 »
For yourself or a friend »
