Under the new guidelines Julie may not have had that mammogram. So, women who were invited but didn’t get a mammogram may still have had an important conversation about breast cancer risk with their doctors.
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This type of cancer accounts for about 20 percent of breast cancer cases in the United States and is more common among women younger than 50, black women and those with the BRCA1 gene mutation, the researchers said.
In announcing the new guidelines, the cancer society made it clear that if a woman wants to get a mammogram at age 40, she should do so. Well, not exactly. Women age 40 to 44 should still “have the opportunity” to have regular breast cancer screenings, according to the American Cancer Society.
Kirsten Moysich, a professor of oncology at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, said “To me the bottom line of these statistics is the evidence that the health disparity between African-American and white women in the U.S.is still going strong”. It also said that it no longer recommended clinical breast exams, in which doctors or nurses feel for lumps in the breast. Still, the American Cancer Society added that women should be familiar enough with their breasts to notice any changes. “Every cancer diagnosis is different”, Bynum said.
The wording may have changed, but the guidelines still emphasize the benefit to annual screening for women in their forties. The ACS and other health agencies appear to be pushing the age back to ease costs on cancer screening programs, but will a few dollars be with the lives that could be saved by adequate testing?
Dr. Sieling said, “It’s more typical for a man to have a mastectomy because they have less breast tissue so it’s harder to preserve a breast when there’s a tumor and very little breast tissue there”.
Imagine hearing those dreaded words, “You have breast cancer”. But that doesn’t mean you have cancer.
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The more proactive you can be at an earlier age about your health the better. (This includes women still being treated and those who have completed treatment.) Survival rates are discussed in the section “Breast cancer survival rates by stage”. And when you find a facility you like, stick with it. Having all your mammograms at the same facility will make it easier for doctors to compare images from one year to the next.
