Nov 09
28
Mammogram Guideline Confusion
**Since I published this, there have now been back and forth debates between a president-appointed health adviser, Kathleen Sebelius, and the government appointed panel’s recommendations to not get mammograms til your fifty. The long and short of it? Just get them when it’s right for you, or consult your doctor to figure out what is right for you, considering your family history, and ALWAYS do your self exams.
These days, apparently the guidelines differ as to when you should start getting mammograms, depending on who you happen to ask. The American Cancer Society still recommends that women begin getting them done in their forties, and now a new government panel/task force has done some research and recommended that these guidelines be revised to starting them when you are fifty, and getting them every two years thereafter. The American Cancer Society has stook by their 40 recommendation steadfastly and even refutes the idea that 50 years of age is the right time to start worrying about breast cancer.
Some are concerned that this recommendation may lead to more confusion than clarification when it comes to women who are in their forties, since it really tends to gloss over the fact that a lot of women now are getting breast cancer in their earlier age. It’s not clear though, if many of these breast cancers that are caught on women in their forties, are more often than not life threatening. In fact, the reason the panel came to the decision they did was because they said that comparatively, women in their forties getting mammograms leads to more misdiagnoses and unnecessary biopsies and worry than it does to successfully catching and treating truly life threatening cancer.
What is also under review is the fact that self examinations have come under scrutiny for being basically useless. Many women totally disagree with this assertion, and I happen to disagree with it as well. I know too many women and have heard too many stories of women who have discovered what turned out to be cancerous lumps in their breasts, by doing the breast self examination regularly. These women certainly wouldn’t tell you that a self exam is worthless, if you ask me!
In the end, no matter who is making whatever recommendation, the decision is up to you. You should also check into what is covered under your medical program or insurance, to see if mammograms would be covered for certain ages or with certain family backgrounds. I myself found out that my insurance company through my employer will cover a mammogram for me, and I’m only 35 years old. They just changed their guidelines to allow that, by the way, because younger patients are getting more agressive breast cancers and doctors are becoming concerned with prevention at an earlier age, especially when a family history exists on the female side, as I have on my side of the family.
