Obese women less likely to get mammography

Seriously obese women are significantly less likely than normal weight women to say they have undergone a recent mammography, U.S. researchers said.

Dr. Nisa Maruthur and her team at The John Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of 17 studies comprising over 276,000 participants, to look at whether overweight and obese women are less likely than normal weight women to have had a recent mammography.

The researchers also looked at the differences in mammography take-up between white and black obese women in three of the studies.

The study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, found that severely obese women were 20 percent less likely than normal weight women to have had a recent mammography. However, this was not the case among black women.

The study authors speculate that the reasons obese women may not be undergoing breast cancer screening, include a delay in taking up medical care because of poor self-esteem and body image, embarrassment, a perceived lack of respect from healthcare providers and unwanted weight loss advice.