Riding the Mammogram Guidelines Roller Coaster

Have you made your personal peace with the 2009 U.S. Preventative Services Task Force recommendations that every year breast screening should begin at age 50, rather than the previously recommended age of 40? Well, not so fast. Here comes other set of recommendations, this time brought to you by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (Acog). The Acog is recommending that doctors should offer all women in their 40s the chance to get every year mammograms.

The crux of the dissimilarity in the middle of the two groups recommendations is the age at which every year mammograms should begin - age 40 or age 50? Unlike the Acog, the Uspstf's recommendations are based upon a broad allembracing look at the numbers, numbers which clearly fire up emotions when we inevitably connect them with our loved one's. Dr. Michael LeFevre, from the Uspstf, breaks it down like this:

Mastectomy Fashions

It's about balancing the benefits and the harms of a test. LeFevre explains that of every 1,000 40-year-old women, 30 would be thinkable, to finally die of breast cancer if they never had a mammogram. If those 1,000 women are screened every other year in the middle of age 50 and 75, (as recommended by Uspstf), that estimate drops to 23 deaths. Beginning screening in the same group at 40 instead would save one supplementary life, meaning 22 would die of breast cancer, on average.

What if that one supplementary life is our's!?

Part of the numbers determination is all those women getting every year mammograms from age 40-50 who are not saved from breast cancer in the process but who potentially suffer through numerous false-positives and painful biopsies, and who potentially growth their risk of developing breast cancer due to the cumulative radiation exposure that comes with an supplementary 10 years of every year mammograms. Dr. Nancy Snyderman, Nbc's chief medical editor, supplementary point outs that because most women's estrogen levels are still fairly high at age 40, their breast tissue is still commonly quite dense, production it hard to distinguish irregularities on a mammogram. So are mammograms the best recipe of monitoring women's breast health before age 5o?

One woman writes into the Today Show's mammogram Q&A section with the following:

"Does anything else ever look down at their breasts like they are ticking time-bombs?"

That was assuredly me prior to my Preventative duplicate mastectomy. Now I wasn't your "average" woman with an median risk of developing breast cancer, not as a Brca2 carrier whose grandmother, mother, aunt and sisters had all battled breast cancer. It was upon learning that I was Brca definite that I finally felt like I had the specifics I needed to make the decision that was best for me. For most women, those at "average" risk of developing breast cancer, there are minute or no specifics, just fear. Disagreements in the middle of those we look to for guidance just adds to our anxiety.

What do you think about the lack of unity in voice about mammogram guidelines? Does it discourage you? Confuse you? Impact your decisions about your own breast screening?

Susan Beausang, President, 4Women.com

Riding the Mammogram Guidelines Roller Coaster