Your Health: Mastectomies and Mammograms

Know Anyone Who's Had "Drive-Through" Mastectomy Surgery?
Some insurance companies already force doctors and hospitals to send women home the same day as their mastectomy surgery, even while still groggy. Most mastectomies are done under general anesthetics, which can have serious side effects of its own. Not to mention the awful pain and possible drainage from the surgery site.

Yet, even more insurance companies are trying to make mastectomies an outpatient procedure, so that women go home the same day, within hours of surgery. Not even one overnight stay for observation.

A radical mastectomy is removal of a whole breast; a simple mastectomy removes portions. A lumpectomy removes only the tumor. Any of these procedures can also entail biopsies of the lymph nodes under or around the armpits, chest and neck area, with serious discomfort and pain for days afterward. The site can also run the risk of infection.

Bills have been brought up in both the House and Senate supporting the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 2009, which will require insurance companies to offer a minimum 48-hour hospital stay for patients undergoing mastectomy.

There have been rumors that this Act being before Congress is a false announcement. That was the bill of 2007. The bills being put forth in 2009 are confirmed as a TRUE occurrence on Snopes.com (the page says 2002 on top, but at bottom you will see it was updated in May 2009).

Background: In 1997, Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D) first put forth such a bill before Congress, but it was never brought to the floor. Instead it languished in committee after committee, according to Snopes. A form of the bill later passed the House, but not the Senate. Shockingly, it took 10 years (spanning both a Democratic and Republican President) for it to take form as the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 2007 and to be sponsored by both the House and Senate. But it died in the 2008 110th Congress.

The new bills, HR 1691 in the House and S688 in the Senate, were introduced to the 111th Congress in March, 2009. The sponsors are: Representative DeLauro again, plus Joe Barton (R-Texas), and Senators Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine). In May, it was transferred to the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions. Will the bills die there?

Lifetime-TV has a petition you can sign to support these bills. Go to the Lifetime Petition here.

Can Mammograms Actually Cause Breast Cancer? Here are some Mammogram Objections and Alternatives:
Since 2005, various evidence and arguments have been put forth that the forcefulness of mammogram X-ray equipment upon the breast can activate cancer cells which may normally remain dormant. Most of this information is prevalent in the alternative care industry, which this writer is a big proponent of, as alternative medicine once saved my life. However, in this case, the margin of evidence that mammograms can cause breast cancer is too slim to call whether true or false yet. Apparently, it's more apt to happen in women who are genetically pre-disposed to breast cancer.

Mammograms can cause a lot of pain, and according to the site Women to Women (run by female doctors), there is a widely acknowledged margin of error. Sometimes, women are diagnosed too late. Sometimes, early or mistaken diagnosis causes undue alarm and radical surgery where none is needed.

Digital Mammograms, ultra-sound, and Thermography (heat sensor detection) are now being used as alternatives to traditional mammograms. It is too early to tell of their overall effectiveness or whether regular mammograms can be replaced by any new test.

(Note: Men are not totally immune to breast cancer either. Any suspicious formations in the male breast area should not be ignored.)

Sources(This writer is not receiving any remuneration or compensation from the links mentioned in this article):
House Bill Status: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-1691.
Senate Bill Status: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-688.
Lifetime TV Petition: http://www.mylifetime.com/my-lifetime-commitment/breast-cancer/petition/breast-cancer-petition.
"Mammograms - what's best for you?" Dixie Mills, MD, Women to Women website, 6/15/09, http://www.womentowomen.com/breasthealth/mammograms.aspx#objections.
"Early Mammograms May Trigger Genetic Breast Cancer," Sherry Baker, 2/8/09, Natural News.com, http://www.naturalnews.com/025560_cancer_breast_cancer_mammograms.html.
Mastectomy: definition and specifics of surgery: http://www.answers.com/topic/mastectomy.
Snopes.com Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act: http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/mastectomy.asp.