The Potential Harms of Breast Cancer Screening Need to be Explored and this Biostatistician is All In

In evaluating the the benefits and harms associated with breast cancer screening, the most common harm is a false-positive result, Diana Miglioretti, PhD, lead author of a recent study on the impact on women's behavior of receiving a false positive finding, said in an interview with Patient Care.^®

Miglioretti's research for the past 2 decades has focused on assessing breast cancer screening strategies and to provide findings to guideline developers to help inform recommendations. In the video above she sets the stage for her study, which gathered data on how women in the US respond to a false positive breast cancer screening result and the impact on future screening.

Diana Miglioretti, PhD, is professor and division chief of biostatistics in the University of California Davis School of Medicine's department of public health sciences and an affiliate investigator at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute. Miglioretti co-leads the US Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium, a network of breast imaging registries with information collected on more than 13 million breast imaging examinations since 1994.