EWBC Response to US Task Force Mammography Guidelines

Posted on: 05/21/2010

In a 2009 message to American women, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius acknowledged the worry that conflicting mammography screening guidelines have incited and added, “Mammograms have always been an important life-saving tool in the fight against breast cancer and they still are today.”

·      Screening mammography saves lives. The goal of a screening test for breast cancer is to find a tumor at an early stage before it becomes palpable or causes other symptoms and before it has a chance to spread outside the breast tissue. By finding the cancer early, we reduce mortality (death rate).

·      Large, clinical highly organized and regulated trials of screening mammography have demonstrated that the advancement of breast cancer within the breast can be stopped thus reducing the death rate by using mammography. Since 1990, the breast cancer death rate in the U.S. has decreased by 30% primarily due to screening mammography. The death rate was flat prior to the advent of screening mammography for the fifty years prior to 1990.

·      Cancers in many younger women tend to be more aggressive and faster growing than the cancers diagnosed in older women. Leading experts from many health care organizations and advocacy groups believe it is very important to begin annual screening mammography at age 40 in order to detect cancers early enough  to treat these women, and produce the best  outcome for the patient with the least possible side effects. Mammography is not a perfect test. It has limitations, particularly in women with dense breast tissue. Women should be told of the benefit and limitations of screening mammography. Some cancers will be missed. Some women will have additional imaging examinations or biopsies for areas detected on screening mammography that turn out not to be non-cancerous. Despite the limitations, screening mammography is a very effective test and a valuable tool in the fight against breast cancer.  The yearly screening mammogram beginning at age 40 is still the only statistically proven diagnostic method of reducing mortality from breast cancer.

Stamatia Destounis, MD        

Philip Murphy, MD

Posy J. Seifert, DO

Patricia A. Somerville, MD                

Wende Logan Young, MD