Chicago specialists disagree with a Copenhagen study that recently brought the practice of routine mammograms under fire in Great Britain. 

"The study really tried to really dismantle screening women in the 40-50 year range. That's very ill conceived," said Dr. Robert Schmidt, professor of radiology at the University of Chicago and a mammography expert. "This is certainly the best thing we've got right now so don't try to throw out the baby with the bathwater here." 

Breast cancer is the second leading cancer death for women in the United States after lung cancer and affects one in every eight women, according to Dr. Lydia Usha, a medical oncologist at Rush University Medical Center.

The study by the Nordic Cochrane Center collaborative maintained that mammograms expose many women to surgery for breast cancers so slow-growing that they never threaten women’s lives.

The study also reported that only one out of every 2,000 women routinely screened for breast cancer in the 50-69 year range will have her life prolonged. But that reduces breast cancer mortality by an estimated 15-20 percent overall, according to the study that involved 500,000 women.

“At the moment [a mammogram is] the best screening we have for breast cancer,” she said.

Sometimes non-invasive cancers are removed when discovered by mammograms, but Usha said mammograms are ultimately beneficial.

“Most of the patients in this country would not want to have breast cancer missed in them under the assumption that there is a small chance that it may not become a problem,” Usha said.

The slow-growing or non-invasive cancers are called ductal carcinoma in situ.

"You don't know who the woman is. You don't know statistically if that's the one who's harmed or not," said Schmidt.

Usha expressed similar opinions.

“At this stage in our knowledge we are not able to predict which ductal carcinoma in situ are going to progress to invasive cancer and which are not,” Ushu said. “Most women in this country don’t want to live with cancer that has the potential to become invasive and kill them.”

Organizations such as the American Cancer Society and the Breast Cancer Network of Strength both encourage mammograms.

Mammographies are still regarded as the standard for detecting breast cancer at its earliest stages, according to the Network of Strength’s position paper on screening mammography.

“We will always take new opinions and evidence based on science, but for the time being we agree that mammograms are the gold standard for detecting breast cancer,” said Christina Koenig, the director of media relations and communications for the Network of Strength.

“Right now the best advice we can say is the decision to have screening mammography should be discussed between the patient and their health care provider,” she said.

The American Cancer Society recommends yearly mammograms starting at age 40 and breast self-exam for women starting in their 20s.

Usha said the primary problem with mammograms is not the false positive results that may lead to biopsies or surgeries for non-invasive cancers. 

“More of an issue is that mammograms can be a false negative, meaning that they don’t show cancer when there is a cancer,” she said.

This was the case for Koenig, now 46, who was diagnosed with cancer at age 39 after she found a lump in her breast that didn’t show up on a mammogram.

“In my case [the mammogram] wasn’t that important because I could feel the tumor," Koenig said. “My mom on the other hand, her cancer was detected through a screening on a mammogram.” Prior to that, her family had no history of breast cancer, she said.