New Mammography Age Stirs Controversy

The recommendation yesterday that the age of mammograms or, breast cancer screenings be moved from age 50 to 40 and that breast self-exams are really not worth the squeeze that you give them, has rocked the world of medicine -- and conventional wisdom.

The United States Preventive Services Task Force, a federally appointed panel of health care experts, recently reversed a longtime stance recommending that women receive receive mammograms starting at age 40 and get them annually.

Since the recommendations were made public on Monday, there has already been an outcry by individuals and influential groups such as the American Cancer Society, which said in a statement, "When recommendations are based on judgments about the balance of risks and benefits, reasonable experts can look at the same data and reach different conclusions."

Interestingly enough, though, women's advocacy organizations such as the National Breast Cancer Coalition, Breast Cancer Action and the National Women's Health Network welcomed the new guidelines.

The USPSTF is basing the new guidelines -- which also say that women between the ages of 50 and 74 get screened every two years -- on new data and seeks to protect women from "overscreening."

According to the New York Times, overscreening "can trigger unnecessary further tests, like biopsies, that can create extreme anxiety. And mammograms can find cancers that grow so slowly that they never would be noticed in a woman's lifetime, resulting in unnecessary treatment."

In essence, the panel found that the modest benefit of mammograms is not worth the harm -- especially in women in their forties (who are overwhelmingly more likely to be harmed, but less likely to have breast cancer.)

Of course, the thousands of women who are survivors because of early detection have serious issues with the revised data and are speaking out.

The new recommendations do not apply to a small group of women with unusual risk factors for breast cancer such as possessing a gene mutation that puts them at higher risk or a history of breast cancer in their family.

What do you think? Is the science there to support these recommendations? Will you put off your mammogram? Do you need more information?

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