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.
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