Women's responses to the mammography experience

Accounts of mammography-related anxiety, embarrassment, and pain have been barriers to women contemplating a mammogram. Because it is not known how many women have had bad mammography experiences, we designed a study to learn what women actually experience when they have a mammogram.

Two hundred fifty-five women were interviewed immediately after having a mammogram at three different breast-imaging centers in the Philadelphia area.

Significant racial differences were noted in this study with reports of mammography-related anxiety and pain. Nonwhite women and women who had less than a high-school education reported significantly more anxiety about having a mammogram. Sixty percent of all women interviewed were anxious about having a mammogram; 20 percent of them reported being extremely anxious. White women reported pain more often than African-American women. Only 12 percent of the women reported that their physicians had explained the mammography procedure, but 61 percent of those women reported no anxiety versus 37 percent of women whose physicians did not explain the procedure. More than one-third (34 percent) of women having a first mammogram stated that their mammogram experience affected their future plans for having another.

Extra physician or nurse time spent in explaining mammography to women could result in lower anxiety, higher levels of future intentions to get mammograms, and better experiences for the women themselves.