Medicine & healthcare

US Panel: Breast Cancer Screenings Should Begin at 40

MAY 10 2023·Updated MAY 16 2023

Story

Image credit: Getty Images [via New York Post]

The Facts

On Tuesday, the US Preventative Services Task Force issued draft guidance advising women with an average risk of breast cancer to begin receiving biennial screenings at age 40, a decade earlier than its previous recommendation of 50.
New York Post
All women and individuals assigned female at birth, who are not at high risk of breast cancer, were in 2016 advised to decide individually in their 40s when to start getting screened.
The Hill
This drastic change — expected to save nearly 20% more lives — comes as data from the Radiological Society of North America shows that the rate of metastatic breast cancer in women aged 25 to 39 has increased by nearly 32% since 2009.
CBS News
The new recommendation is closer to that of the American Cancer Society, which states that women aged 40 to 44 should get biennial mammograms and those over 45 should receive annual screenings. The Task Force is seeking public comments on its draft guidance.
FOX News
Though breast cancer is very treatable when caught early, it is the second leading cause of cancer death among US women, with the CDC reporting some 42K deaths annually.
NPR
One in eight women develops the disease during the course of their lives, with the median age for diagnosis across them being 62. Black women, however, are more likely to be diagnosed at earlier ages or with aggressive subtypes of the cancer.
USA Today

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The Spin

Pro-establishment narrative

This draft recommendation is a step in the right direction in the fight against breast cancer, aligning the Task Force with the American Cancer Society in recognizing that the benefits of screening outweigh its harms. Yet, there is room for further improvement, as the introduction of annual mammograms could help younger women and Black women find earlier-stage and aggressive cancers.

CNN

Establishment-critical narrative

Though breast cancer screening has been promoted as life-saving, it has disproportionately caused more harm than benefit by increasing mastectomies and overdiagnosing healthy women, all while failing to catch cancer earlier. Despite seeming counterintuitive, avoiding mammograms reduces the risk of becoming a breast cancer patient by one third and protects people from unnecessary treatments like radiotherapy.

PubMed Central (PMC)