Sources:
Screening: Older Women May Be Skipping Mammograms
By Eric Nagourney; NY Times June 20, 2006
Older Women Have Far Fewer Mammograms Than They Report
By Joel R. Cooper, Health Behavior News Service June 20, 2006
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Both of these articles report on a study to be published in the August issue of The American Journal of Preventive Medicine1 that compared Medicare data for mammograms received by 146,669 women ages 65 and older with patient self-reports collected by the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and the National Health Interview Study for the period between 1991 and 2001.
The trend demonstrated by the results in general can be seen in isolated finding that 70 to 80 percent of women ages 65 to 69 self-reported compliance with receiving a mammogram every two years, but only 61 percent were actually screened.
African-American, Asian-American and Hispanic women in this age group received mammogram screening at even lower rates
The study did not address the causes of this disparity.
Commentary
None of this should be surprising, but it is worthwhile to note another bit of supporting evidence for the prevailing trends in patient compliance:
- Significant noncompliance exists regardless of age or treatment/screening.
- Noncompliance is typically (but not always) more pronounced among lower socio-economic and minority groups.2
- As a instrument for measuring patient compliance, self-report is almost universally unreliable
