New guidelines urge later, less frequent mammograms

Source: Boston Globe

Most women should wait until age 45 to start getting annual mammograms and should cut back to every-other-year testing at 55, the American Cancer Society advised Tuesday in a major shift in its guidelines for breast cancer screening.

Until now, the group — one of the most respected voices on cancer — urged women to get yearly mammograms from 40 onward. But studies have shown that mammograms, even when they detect tumors, have little effect on whether a young woman will die of breast cancer.

About “85 percent of women in their 40s and 50s who die of breast cancer would have died regardless of mammography,” Drs. Nancy Keating and Lydia Pace of Brigham and Women’s Hospital wrote in an editorial accompanying the new guidelines published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The cancer society also recommended for the first time that women forgo breast exams performed by their doctor because they are not as effective as mammograms at finding tumors.

Read more: https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2015/10/20/american-cancer-society-advises-women-start-mammograms-later-and-get-fewer-tests/bccqMFKgZ8sg43BUbuSXqJ/story.html