In the U.S., false-positive mammograms cost $4 billion annually

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published 7 April 2015

New research has found that false-positive mammograms cost the U.S. $4 billion a year.

False-positives can occur because what looks like a tumor on an X-ray can actually be a cyst or a growth that later disappears. Mei-Sing Ong and Dr. Ken Mandl of Boston Children's Hospital studied false-positive mammograms and breast cancer overdiagnoses among more than 700,000 women between the ages of 40-59 from 2011 to 2013, NBC News reports.

They found that 77,729 women, or 11 percent of those screened, had a false-positive mammogram that caused them to have to get another mammogram, biopsy, or other test to determine if it was in fact breast cancer, at an average cost of $852 per person. "The costs associated with false-positive mammograms and breast cancer overdiagnoses appear to be much higher than previously documented," they wrote in the journal Health Affairs.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.