If this is not your name, click here.
| | If this is not your name, click here. | | |
| | Contact Us | Order Now | Journals | Bookstore | Register a colleague | | |
| |  Annual Mammographies Should Start at 40 -- American Cancer Society ATLANTA, March 23, 1997 -- The American Cancer Society has voted to recommend that women begin annual mammography screening at age 40. Prior to this vote, the Society's guidelines suggested that women 40-49 could be screened with mammography every year or two. "The research evidence now tells us that by beginning a program of annual mammography at age 40, women can give themselves the best chance of detecting cancer early, when there is a higher opportunity for long-term survival, and more treatment options," said Myles P. Cunningham, M.D., national president of the American Cancer Society, at the conclusion of the Society’s board of directors' meeting,. To arrive at its new guidelines, the Society convened a workshop of experts earlier this month to review current data from randomized clinical trials from across the world. The workshop panel also reviewed other means of measuring the effectiveness of mammography screening including increased frequency of early stage cancers detected, the corresponding decrease in late stage cancers being diagnosed, the decrease in tumor size, and the spread of cancer to nearby lymph nodes. "The public debates about mammography screening, especially for women in their 40's, have confused women of all ages and their doctors too," said Marilyn Leitch, M.D., a surgical oncologist who chairs the American Cancer Society's Breast Cancer Advisory Committee. "We are confident that this new guideline is appropriate. It's our responsibility to provide usable and understandable information, not only in the form of a simple guideline, but also about the benefits and the limitations of screening." "We hope that this change will lessen the confusions," she added. According to Dr. Leitch, breast cancers generally grow faster in women in their forties than in older women. The new recommendation for more frequent annual screening should, she explained, result in a greater reduction of deaths. Existing data from more recent studies using annual screening report lower mortality rates than do the data from trials screening every 18-24 months. In reporting the new guideline, Dr. Cunningham also noted the limitations of mammography, including false negative and positive exams, the lack of universal high quality mammography, as well as costs inherent in wide scale screening and associated follow-up procedures. "We don't have enough knowledge to say which women will benefit the most from screening, especially among women in their forties, or which women will not benefit at all. It is just prudent to offer screening to all women 40 and older with the confidence that overall, mammography's lifesaving benefits far outweigh its limitations," Dr. Cunningham said. A copy of the Breast Cancer Workshop's Report to the American Cancer Society's Board of Directors is available by calling Joann Schellenbach, 212-382-2169, or Lynne Camoosa, 404-329-7775, both of the American Cancer Society, or on the Society's Internet site at www.cancer.org.
|
