Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (12113)	12/7/2009 3:24:16 PM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

You're still equating overall data and forties data. ... assuming the survival rate for those in this age range is the same as the overall survival rate. You can't assume that. And I was following your example. You realize that you essentially doing that below by equating diagnoses in the forties with deaths in the 45-55 age group: "We can find that somewhere around 15% of diagnoses occur in the forties. (We don't know how many of those were found via mammogram.) And that 15.1% of deaths occur between 45 and 55, which would be the age range that determines survival for a 40 something diagnosis. ------------------------- Besides having more aggressive cancers, younger women have denser breasts, which makes diagnosis more iffy. younger women tend to have more aggressive breast cancers than older women, which may explain why survival rates are lower among younger women. Five Year Survival Rate By Age Younger than 45--81% Ages 45-64--85% Ages 65 and older-86% Source: American Cancer Society I used the overall survival rate of 89.1% from the NCI SEER source. But if 85% or 81% were used instead, the drop to 44% will still be substantial. In fact, if younger women tend to have more aggressive cancers (I've read this too) that would tend to make early diagnosis (ie mammograms) even more important as the 44% overall survival rate without mammograms might be too high for that group. ----------------------------------- Cutting mammograms in the selected age group in half, one could surmise would produce perhaps half as big a reduction as calculated, say 3.4%. Assuming for the sake of argument that your methodology is correct, 3.4 is a lot closer to 1 than to 11. Sure. And it would still be misleading to characterize it as a wash. ------------------------------------- "We can find that somewhere around 15% of diagnoses occur in the forties. (We don't know how many of those were found via mammogram.) And that 15.1% of deaths occur between 45 and 55, which would be the age range that determines survival for a 40 something diagnosis. Even allowing that some of those deaths could be women diagnosed younger than forty and just over 50, that's pretty much a WASH." What is wrong with that logic? I understand that you've offered an alternate methodology but what's wrong with the original logic? The "around 15% of diagnoses" is an estimate and may be low. Thats not real important though re. logic. What is more important logically is that all you're doing is comparing % of total diagnoses with % of total deaths in a particular age group in the US. Considering that women in their 40's and up probably receive as frequent mammograms as those above that age group, that doesn't tell you anything at all about the value of mammograms.