There aren’t many studies supporting this practice, and here’s more evidence: “Self exams, and those by healthcare providers, actually produce an increase in benign biopsies, but don’t get the patient into treatment earlier or save her life.”
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In this Cochrane review, one of the studies did have more cancers identified by self-exam. One thought is how did the follow up in a clinical trial setting affect the identification of the breast cancer? If a women is not undergoing regular physician visits and mammograms, such as in a clinical trial, then the need for self-identification seems like it would be needed.
In terms of a professional breast exam, in most studies both groups had mammograms as well. So clinical breast exam was only considered as an addition to mammograms.
The only study that actually compared clinical breast exam to mammograms was CNBSS. In CNBSS the mortality was comparable among the group that had clinical breast exam and mammograms, so clinical breast exam was shown to have as much value as mammograms. CNBSS was criticized because it didn’t show what people wanted it to show, but most criticism were shown to be groundless. Some criticisms went so far as to claim deliberate subversion by study’s author, but there was no conflict of interest in study author’s. In fact, both Cochrane review and PDQ considered CNBSS to be among better quality studies.
So if they don’t improve mortality outcomes, why does my doctor (and the mammogram technician) always ask if I do them? What’s the point of asking? What are they hoping to learn from the answer?
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