Don?t Listen to the New Breast Cancer Screening Guidelines

Second to lung cancer, breast cancer kills more women in the United States than any other disease. In fact, before 2009 ends, an estimated 40,000 people will die from this disease and another 192,000 will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. Although men can also get breast cancer, it affects a majority of women.

A woman’s risk of dying from breast cancer is an estimated 1 in 35, and this death risk increases with age. The earlier that you diagnose breast cancer, the greater the survival rate is. If you catch this cancer in stage 2, you have a 5 year relative survival rate of 86 percent. It’s 100 percent with stage 1 cancer. Sadly, if you wait too late, at stage 4, these breast cancer patients only have a 20 percent survival rate.

With these staggering statistics, it is very important to detect cancer early. Mammograms, self breast exams, and clinical breast exams can be used to detect cancer in its earliest stages.

Mammograms are low dose x-rays that show the inside of your breasts can often detect breast cancer before the onset of any symptoms. That’s why the American Cancer Society, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and other healthcare professionals are standing firm in their stance that women get regular screening tests starting at age 40.

These major groups disagree with the new U.S. Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendation that regular mammograms start at age 50. As of November 2009, this federally funded task force also argues against self-breast exams.

Since one of the major signs of breast cancer is a painless lump that develops in your breast, not doing a self-breast exam on a regular basis can make delay your diagnosis.

In 2009, the American Cancer Society estimates that over 18,000 people who are younger than 45 years old will have invasive breast cancers, and close to 3,000 of people under 45 will die from this disease.

If you wait to detect cancer, it is possible that people in the earliest stages of cancer will miss their symptoms and when they finally have a mammogram exam at age 50, their breast cancer has already metastasized (spread to other parts of their body, including their brain and vital organs). In this advanced stages, their survival rate is quite low as these cancers are hard to treat.

Although the choice of healthcare is up to each and every individual person and woman, this is an issue that will continue to be debated in the future. When is early detection a bad thing?

Because the USPSTF is a federally funded entity, one must wonder if they are making these recommendations based on economic reasons. Many major healthcare organizations, including the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins, as well as the American Cancer Society and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology are sticking by the old guidelines of starting screening at age 40.