DC breast cancer surgeon recommending women begin regular mammograms at earlier ages
WASHINGTON (DC News Now) — Regular mammograms to screen for breast cancer should start younger, at age 40, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
Women ages 40 to 74 should get screened every other year, U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said. Previously, the task force had said women could choose to start breast cancer screening as young as 40, with a stronger recommendation that they get the exams every two years from ages 50 through 74.
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Dr. Jennifer Son, a breast surgeon and general surgeon at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., said she feels it’s important to continue to get mammography screening every year.
“I don’t think there should be a stop age if people are now aging finer as you should say. So, there are very healthy 75 year olds and have a longer life-expectancy and so we should not stop at the age of 75. We should continue to go if the patient is healthy and otherwise has a longer life expectancy,” she said.
The announcement from the influential task force makes official a draft recommendation announced last year. The recommendations were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Other medical groups, including the American College of Radiology and the American Cancer Society, suggest mammograms every year — instead of every other year — starting at age 40 or 45, which may cause confusion.
Breast cancer death rates have fallen as treatment continues to improve. But breast cancer is still the second-most common cause of cancer death for women in the U.S.
About 240,000 cases are diagnosed annually and nearly 43,000 women die from breast cancer, according to a report from the Associated Press.
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Son said she thinks women are now getting breast cancer at an earlier age due to multiple reasons.
“It could be epigenetics. Our society, what we’re eating, it’s not necessarily just attributed to genetic mutations such as BRCA [breast cancer gene],” she said. “But for all these reasons, unfortunately, younger women are getting breast cancer, similar to colon cancer. A lot of younger people are getting diagnosed with colon cancer. I guess just the time, age, history, our environment, all of that.”
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