Anxiety related to false-positive mammograms has a minimal impact on women’s well-being, according to researchers at Dartmouth. The researchers discovered that the anxiety is temporary and does not leave a lasting negative impact on a woman’s health.

The study findings are reported in “Consequences of False-Positive Screening Mammograms,” which was reported online in the Apr. 21 version of JAMA Internal Medicine.

Between 40 and 60 percent of women who undergo a routine screening mammography over a 10-year span will experience a false-positive mammogram. The false-positive mammograms are followed with additional testing, which sometimes includes a biopsy, to determine that there is no cancer present.

Researchers previously thought that anxiety and pain, in addition to the hassle of undergoing further tests, might have a negative impact on women who experience false-positive mammograms.

For the study, researchers at Dartmouth relied on data collected by the Digital Mammographic Imaging Screening Trial (DMIST), which the American College of Radiology Imaging Network conducted, to determine the effect that a false-positive mammogram has on women’s lives.

Lead author Anna Tosteson, ScD, professor of Community and Family Medicine and of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, and co-director of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center’s Control Research Program, said in the official press release, “Most policy analyses of breast cancer screening have used assumptions about the harms of screening on health and overall well-being based on expert opinion rather than patient-reported outcomes.” She continued, “The DMIST study did not support these assumptions, and gave us evidence that a false-positive mammogram experience has a limited impact on women’s overall well-being.”