Women who have a false-positive mammogram outcome – when breast cancer is confirmed and then later ruled out with more testing – can suffer from long-lasting stress and anxiety for nearly three years after the wrong diagnosis, a new study suggests.

The findings, published in the Annals of Family Medicine, reveal that the emotional reactions are long-lasting because the misdiagnosis is felt as a threat to the patient’s life.

Experts have often said that false-positive mammograms need to be considered when recommendations are established for who should be screened, at what age, and how often. Mammograms with false-positive results are fairly common.

According to the authors:

“The risk of a false positive for every 10 screenings ranges from 20 percent to 60 percent in the U.S.”

Normally, after an abnormal mammogram, physicians conduct additional mammograms, and according to those outcomes, more tests like a biopsy, MRI, or ultrasound.

In the current cohort study, the researchers recruited 454 women with abnormal mammogram results from over a one-year period. For each woman with an unusual finding on a screening mammogram (false and true positives) – the researchers found two additional women with normal screening outcomes who were screened on the same day at the same place.

The participants then completed the Consequences of Screening in Breast Cancer – a questionnaire consisting of 12 psychosocial results – at baseline, one, six, eighteen, and thirty-six months.

The survey asked the women about topics such as:

  • their sense of calmness
  • if they were anxious or not about breast cancer
  • whether they felt optimistic about the future

Of the volunteers who had abnormal results, 174 found they had breast cancer. Another 272 found they were given a false positive.

Around six months after the last diagnosis, those with false positives had negatives changes in inner calmness as much as the women who had breast cancer. Even after three years, the false positive women had negative psychological effects compared with those who had normal outcomes.

Only after three years did the differences between those with normal, false-positive, and breast cancer outcomes, begin to deteriorate.

The authors were not surprised by these outcomes. They noted that women who received a false-positive often feel at risk even after receiving the news that they are cancer free.

A study released just yesterday by JAMA Internal Medicine suggests that women aged 50 to 74 years can get mammograms every other year instead of annually. Experts believe that this will put them at a lower risk for false-positives.

Written by Kelly Fitzgerald