Task Force Releases New Breast Cancer Screening Recommendations

By Elizabeth Mendes The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has issued new breast cancer screening recommendations for women who don’t have symptoms of breast cancer and are not at high risk of the disease. The USPSTF recommends that most women get screening mammograms every other year from ages 50 to 74. This is unchanged from the last time the USPSTF updated its recommendations, which was in 2009. The recommendation also says women can choose to begin getting mammograms every other year in their 40s. The task force is an independent panel of experts authorized by Congress to make recommendations about specific preventive services for patients with no signs or symptoms. It released a draft of these recommendations in April, 2015. The final recommendations were published Monday, January 11, in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The new USPSTF recommendation says that “the decision to start screening mammography in women prior to age 50 years should be an individual one,” made after women weigh the potential benefit of screening against the potential harms. The benefit is potentially finding breast cancer earlier. The harms cited by USPSTF include the risk of finding a suspicious area that turns out not to be cancer (false-positives) and potentially finding and treating a breast cancer that would never have caused a problem (overdiagnosis and overtreatment). “The number of breast cancer deaths averted increases with age; women aged 40 to...
Source: American Cancer Society :: News and Features - Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: Breast Cancer Source Type: news