United States: According to the latest research, almost 40 percent of women in their 40s would delay beginning their regular breast cancer screening after becoming aware of some of its potential downsides.
More about the finding
The outcomes of the new national survey were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The US Preventive Services Task Force did finalize the recommendations, which included that the women who start undergoing mammography every other year must begin at the age of forty instead of fifty.
How was the survey conducted?
The study was conducted by including almost 500 women, whose ages ranged between 39 and 49, without a history of breast cancer as well as gene mutations.
According to Laura D. Scherer, PhD, the lead author and who was working with the University of Colorado School of Medicine and colleagues, “There are women in their 40s who would prefer to have mammography at an older age, especially after being informed of the benefits and harms of screening,” as radiologybusiness.com reported.
“Women who wanted to delay screening were at lower breast cancer risk than women who wanted screening at their current age. Many found information about the” benefits and harms of mammography surprising,” she continued.
What more has the survey revealed?
As the experts said, before even looking at the decision aid, almost 27 percent of survey participants choose to delay screening, as compared to their current age, as radiologybusiness.com reported.
It is as compared to 38.5 percent of those after viewing the aid, which also presented details regarding the overdiagnosis risk as a percentage of all screening-detected cancers (12% to 22%).
There was no jump in the total count of women who had never wanted to go through mammography tests, at the rate of 5.4 percent before even viewing the decision aid, and a further 4.3 percent afterward.
Almost 37.4 percent of the participants took the information regarding overdiagnosis as “surprising,” and 27.7 percent of them said that in a similar manner about the risk for potential false-positives, whereas another 22.9 percent were related to the benefits of screening.
According to the authors, “These data suggest that many people who want to delay screening are considering the evidence and deciding that, for them, the harms outweigh the benefits at their current age.”