As my son keeps telling me every time I ask him to do
something he thinks I should have learned to do myself by now (which is, of
course, anything to do with a computer or a cellphone), “WE are what we
repeatedly do,” meaning (I think) that if you’re a lazy boomer with tech-smart
kids and you’ve always relied on your kids to help you out of some tech mishap,
you are not suddenly going to start solving your tech problems on your own but
rather you are going to go back to the well – your kids – every time they allow
to ring em on their cellphones.
Anyway, I thought of that citation as an appropriate way
of introducing this piece of frustrating medical news, namely that despite
universal new guidelines to stop testing women so often for cervical cancer,
according to a recent survey of doctors’ practices published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine,
lots of American doctors are still subjecting their female patients to yearly
Pap smears, even women into their 70s and 80’s, in whom there is absolutely any
proof at all that Pap smears will prevent any deaths from cervical cancer.
So why are doctors doing this test way more often than is
recommended by guidelines?
Well, the easy answer, of course, is that it pays to do it
and undoubtedly in the US that does play a role in why doctors seem to order so
many more tests and perform so many more procedures than Canadian doctors do.
But in this report, the biggest culprit (my word) for this
over-use of Pap smears was not money but rather the “fear” that many doctors
expressed that 1) if they stopped doing annual Pap smears, women would stop
coming in for annual check-ups (someone should tell those doctors that most
health authorities don’t recommend annual check-ups any more either), and 2) that
they have no real choice in the matter because so many women still demand
annual cervical cancer testing because, “Well, what’s the harm, eh?”.
So for those women (and others),
here’s a quote in the editorial that accompanied this survey: “Screening for
cervical cancer and other cancers such as breast and prostate has clear
potential for harms as well as benefits and must be carefully weighed before a
rational decision about screening can be made.”
