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

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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