Orlando woman denied mammogram twice because of age

[The Straight Story]

ORLANDO, Fla. -

Katie Schaber said she has been fighting to get a medical facility to give her a mammogram since December.

The 26-year-old University of Florida graduate is going public after both Sand Lake Imaging on Turkey Lake Road and Celebration Florida Hospital denied her doctor's order for a mammogram.

According to Schaber, she was told she was too young and did not need it.
keep fighting for something that so many women find uncomfortable," Schaber said, "But I think that it is important."

Schaber's insurance company will cover the procedure, yet even with the prescription and a history of breast cancer in her family, both facilities denied her request for a mammogram because she is under the age of 30.

http://www.clickorlando.com/news/Orlando-woman-denied-mammogram-twice-because-of-age/-/1637132/8588232/-/oahadc/-/index.html

[mainer]

1. Facilities are supposed to obey doctor's orders

This sounds fishy to me.

[Drale]

2. Sounds like a good case for a lawsuit. /nt

[asjr]

3. I keep wondering how much more

screwed up our country can become and then something like this comes along and I realize it can be. We are told if breast cancer is caught early there is a good chance of recovery. It must be owned by a Republican.

[justiceischeap]

4. And there are young women who get breast cancer

I smell medical malpractice lawsuit in the air.

[McCamy Taylor]

5. Two medical points. One, she needs genetic testing to see if she carries a breast cancer gene.

Simply doing self exams and annual radiologic studies is not good enough for a woman with maternal relatives with premenopausal breast cancer. If her risk is extremely high, she needs to be offered the option of prophylactic surgery.

Two, radiation to young breasts has an increased potential to trigger cancer down the line. Plus, mammography has limited ability to detect cancer in "young" breast tissue, meaning that a normal mammogram can not rule out cancer.

I think the final decision, the MRI, made sense, and I wonder if the correct way to screen women under 30 who are high risk should not be some combination of ultrasound followed by MRI.

I have seen several reports of mammograms of young women in my practice that come back saying that the exam was suboptimal due to the density of the breast tissue. That is radiologists way of saying "We just could not get a good exam."