Mammography During Your 40s

Ivanhoe Newswire
Friday, December 8, 2006; 12:00 AM

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A mammogram is the most accurate way available now to detect breast cancer. New research suggests the age at which women start getting yearly screenings is debatable.

In the United States, current guidelines call for yearly mammograms starting at age 40. However, the screening age is 50 in England. Researchers there wanted to know if the benefits of earlier screenings truly outweighed the risks.

The Age trial included more than 160,900 women who received annual mammograms starting either at age 40 or 50. The study continues at 23 sites in England, Wales and Scotland. So far, researchers have followed the women for an average of 11 years.

Investigators report the earlier screenings were associated with a slight decrease in the number of breast cancer deaths. They also found the younger women had more false positives compared to the older women. Furthermore, they report it will not become clear for many more years if the earlier screenings will eventually lead to more radiation-induced breast cancers.

In an accompanying commentary, two doctors from the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute in Tampa, Fla., assessed results from study and nine other studies on the issue of mammography in younger women. They write there is not a lot of reliable data to assess the benefits and the risks of screening women in their 40s. "Every women, with her physician's guidance, should decide whether regret will be greater if she develops breast cancer that could have been detected earlier by screening mammography, or if she develops breast cancer later in life as a result of screening mammography itself," they write.

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SOURCE: The Lancet, 2006;368:2053-2060:2035-2037