New Advice: Skip mammograms in 40’s, start at 50

Most women don’t need mammograms in their 40’s and should get on every other year starting at 50 years old. This is completely backwards to what American Cancer Society’s thoughts and position in regards of this subject. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force regarding this subject states that women should stop doing self breast examinations. The twenty years the cancer society has recommended women to get their first mammogram starting at the age of forty. Now a government panel of doctors and scientists has came to the conclusion that being screened for cancer so early and so often can only lead to unneeded biopsies and false alarms with no improvement of any odds on surviving. As Dr. Diana Petitti, vice chair of the panel, “The benefits are less and the harms are greater when screening starts in the 40’s.” The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has a lot of pull with Medicare and many other insurance companies as to these new guidelines. Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the cancer society’s deputy chief medical officer states, “Our concern is that as a result of this confusion, women may elect not to get screened at all. And that, to me, would be a serious problem.” These new guidelines are for general population not for those at high risk of breast cancer because of family history or gene mutations. The new advice says:
*Most women in their 40s should not get mammograms routinely.
*Women 50-74 should get mammograms every other year until they turn 75, which after that the risks and benefits are unknown.
*The value of breast exams by doctors is unknown. Self exams are of no help.
Dr. Otis Brawley states, “This is one screening test I recommend unequivocally, and would recommend to any woman 40 and over.” Dr. Brawley also wrote , the task force has based its advice on the conclusion of a screening of 1300 woman in their 50s saving one life is worth it, but the 1900 women in the 40s to save a life is not worth it? The new guidelines balance these risks and benefits, the possibility of dying of breast cancer after age 40 is 3 percent, they calculate. Getting a mammogram every other year from ages 50-69 lowers that risk by about 16 percent. Just starting at the age of 40 would prevent a death but would lead to 470 false alarms for every 1000 women screened. Mammograms’ continuing through the age of 79 years prevents three deaths but increases the number of treated women that would not decrease or even threaten their lives.

As I was reading I found myself sick to my stomach not knowing if it was from something I ate or if it was from what I was reading on http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091116/ap_on_he_me/us_med_mammogram_advice. The further I read this article; I was unsure if I was happy or upset. My feelings in the beginning were pure rage. A woman should decide what to do with her body, when to have it checked out or not, I honestly feel this in no way should be left to our government.

As in the article, “that in most women, tumors are slow- growing, and that all likelihood increases with age.” So my issue with this screening is that they are labeling women in general with the same criteria. No woman is the same, as should not be compared to be so. This article was very difficult for me to write as I had such feelings of anger with these so called scientists and doctors that are willing to take women’s lives in their hands just from a test of certain proportion. As said so eloquently, “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance,” Saul Bellow. The only thing in this article that kept me in some agreeance was that it states that this is for the general population of woman, no in regards to women at high risk. So I ask you, is ignorance bliss? Not when it comes to your own body, should it not be your decision as to have yourself examined or to have yourself tested should be a decision made by you not by your doctor or your government. As found in http://www.iredellmemorial.org/uploadedFiles/Centers_of_Excellence/Womens_Services/Spirit_of_Women/OCT09_HQ_Factsheet.pdf it states, “Over two million female breast cancer survivors are alive today. Although more people are diagnosed with breast cancer now, fewer die from the disease. The main reason: women have overcome their fears, and have sought regular exams and mam­mograms leading to early detection, which generally leads to early treatment – when it can achieve the best results. Women who are diagnosed while breast cancer is still confined to the primary site have a five-year survival rate of over 98%!” So if the general population is what this task force is concentrating, one area of women that are not at high risk, wait to do self examinations until 20 years of age, and wait to do your first mammogram till 40 years of age. Now they are saying wait until 50-74 years of age. With this said, I ask you how will this survey, this test that the Task Force came up with, how will it help a young girl named Hannah Auslam a 10 year old girl with breast cancer. To be precise she has is Secretory Carcinoma, a rare form that less than one in a million is diagnosed. In http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/11-year-youngest-breast-cancer-survivors/story?id=8782697 because of her young age and the rareness of the type of cancer, her doctors are finding it very difficult to find her a treatment that is age appropriate. My Point Exactly!! April Hannah become the country’s youngest breast cancer survivor, she received her last chemotherapy treatment this fall and was tested with no detectable cancer found.

Taylor Thompson 13 years old, of Little Rock, Arkansas has aggressive form of breast cancer, the kind that has a 98 percent chance of returning, she will undergo surgery in June. As found in http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/26/tweens.breast.cancer/index.html Hannah and Taylors cases are rare, breast cancer is emerging more and more in the younger generation, a lot younger than 40 or 50 years of age as recommended. Dr. Marisa Weiss, founder of www.breastcancer.org states, “The breast is the only organ in men and women that are formed after you’re born.” Breast cancer could theoretically occur in any age or gender. Seven percent of breast cancer cases occur in patients under the age of forty. Taylor would have been in the category of general public, there is no family history of breast cancer in the family. I have found this article to be personal, as a woman over forty and a family history rippled with cancer in both my parents, mostly all my aunts and uncles and have had all my grandparents diagnosed with some sort of cancer from skin cancer to colon, kidney, lung, bone, prostate. I have educated myself and continue educating myself as to the types, causes, longevity and treatment of different types of cancers. To turn a blind eye, and to generalize the public, women, or men is turning a blind eye to watching many of our mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters or even fathers, grandfathers, brothers or spouses. Watching the intense pain my father went through trying to live through his cancer daily, or yearly makes you check your possibilities and knowing your body. As my father lost my mother at a young age of 58 years old, he lost his best friend, his soul mate, and as he put it, “His right hand.” This is a death that is beyond painful for the victim or the people that are connected to that particular life. Each life is connected to many others, the pain doesn’t stop at the cancer victim, it carries on for a life time for anyone that cares. Each day that I take my father to his cancer treatment center, I watch what he goes through, I hear his pain, and I see the chemicals fill this man’s body. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have my daughter at the age of 10 or 13 years old to have cancer, breast cancer is even more unbelievable at that age. To know the pain on a personal side of cancer is a horrific thing no person should ever endure, but to hear that the government is trying to tell women and men to stop personal self breast examinations and to delay mammograms by another ten years is beyond understanding. I feel that it follows more along financial recession issues then thinking that women don’t have breast cancer at a young age. Should a person not be more cautious of their own body then to find out by putting off testing that a young life is cut short do to late determination of cancer? Does that not fall under the concept rather be safe than sorry? Can the, “U.S. Preventive Services Task Force”, look a mother in the eyes and tell her, “I am sorry, the numbers didn’t see this, and she is an extreme rare case.” It is my body and I honestly feel that it is my decision to make and absolutely not the government!