As recently as 1992, the ACS suggested women as young as 35 receive mammograms.
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“Not only did I have breast cancer, but I had colon cancer and that was stage-4, so that was very serious”, Enerson said while also mentioning a diagnosis for ovarian cancer.
The new recommendations don’t apply to women with family histories of breast cancer or other risk factors.
“About 85% of women in their 40s and 50s who die of breast cancer would have died regardless of mammography screening”, Keating said in her editorial. These steps and the waiting that accompanies them can certainly be anxiety-producing for patients, but most American women would happily undergo that temporary worry to learn they definitively don’t have cancer.
“Mammography is the proven method of identifying cancer at the earliest stage when we can best save a life”, Schetter told ABC 27 News.
Who is considered to be “average risk”?
The new guidelines also say after age 55, women should get mammograms every other year.
Women should continue mammograms as long as their overall health is good and their life expectancy is 10 years or more. The old guidelines did not include an age limit.
Clinical breast exams are no longer recommended in the new guidelines. She’s 44 now and says she first thought about getting a mammogram when she turned 40. They do say that those who feel they need yearly before or after those ages should be allowed to continue but the concern was that payment by insurance companies could change with suggestions like these.
“Actually, the ACS endorsed coverage for screening mammograms for a woman beginning at any age and at any screening interval and not going with the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force A or B recommendations”.
The new guidelines were published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“You let it go two years, mine could have been invasive by then”.
Starting at 55, the American Cancer Society recommends screenings every two years. Nessa Johnson, cancer survivor said. The ob/gyns and radiologists recommend starting at 40.
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Because women in their early-40s are at lower risk for the disease, but at higher risk for false positives, the ACS now recommends annual mammograms start at age 45, with the option to start them at age 40 if they want. The most obvious example is in prostate cancers, but researchers have found similar cases in cancers of other regions.
