United States: Female patients should have regular mammograms for early breast cancer detection from age 40, based on recommendations made by a task force in the US with the age range 40 to 74; women who participated in the screening get it every second year, said the group.
The task force mentioned that women who opt to begin their breast cancer screening at 40, stressing that this is only their recommendation, not a mandate; as women age, they should pursue a mammogram screening once every two years from the age of 50 to 74.
The statement released on Tuesday by the US Preventive Services Task Force finally made an initial notice announced last year. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) paper is where everything was published.
Dr. Therese Bevers of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston said, “It’s a win that they are now recognizing the benefits of screening women in their 40s,” as US News reported.
Moreover, the other medical groups, including the American College of Radiology and the American Cancer Society, suggested that performing mammograms annually instead of on alternate years, starting from the age of 40 or 45, would likely cause confusion. Bevers said, but “now the starting age will align with what many other organizations are saying.”
More about Breast Cancer
The continual development of breast cancer treatments thus contributes to the fact of death rates falling. However, breast cancer is still the second leading cause of women’s death from cancer in this country. When 240,000 cases are diagnosed annually, and about 43,000 women lose their lives from breast cancer.
The nudge toward earlier screening is meant to address two vexing issues: The growing incidence among 40-year-old women that has risen at a rate of 2 percent annually since 2015 and the fact that the mortality rate is six times higher in case of black women compared to white women who are also part of the risk category according to task force vice chair Dr. John Wong who operates at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.
Wong said, “Sadly, we know all too well that Black women are 40% more likely to die from breast cancer than white women,” and the modeling studies predict that performing earlier studies would help all women and have “even more benefit for women who are Black.”