The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force update marks a major shift from the controversial advice it gave in 2009 that most women could wait until 50 to begin having their breasts scanned.
A draft recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force says breast cancer screening should start at age 40 to benefit groups including Black women and women with dense breasts. A new look at the science of preventing breast cancer deaths promises to reshape when, and how many, mammograms American women will get — again.
In calling for fewer mammograms over a woman’s lifetime, the task force cited the frequency with which breast cancers were overdiagnosed, leading to invasive yet unnecessary treatment, as well as the harms that come from needless biopsies and other work-ups done in response to false-positive test results. It also recognized that mammograms expose women to radiation, which in some cases could wind up causing cancer in otherwise healthy women.
What prompted the task force to change its mind and advise that screening mammograms begin at 40? The members said they were strongly influenced by the experiences of Black women, who tend to develop aggressive breast cancers earlier than white women do, and to die of them more often. According to one study, Black women are 39% more likely to die of breast cancer than the population of women as a whole.
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