WEDNESDAY, Aug. 28, 2024 (HealthDay News) — A new study supports the idea that women age 40 and older should have mammograms annually, rather than every two years, to detect breast cancer early.
A team from the University of Pittsburgh reported that the frequency with which mammograms detected late-stage tumors was significantly lower in women who had mammograms annually than in women who had them two or more years apart.
“Annual mammograms are critical for early detection of breast cancer. They increase the chance of survival and reduce harm to patients because treatment may not need to be as intensive. They also facilitate recovery and can reduce the cost of treatment,” said lead study author Dr. Margarita Zuley, professor of radiology at Pitt.
The new findings come amid competing guidelines on recommended mammogram frequency, which can be confusing for many women in their 40s.
The American College of Radiology guidelines recommend that women over 40 have a mammogram once a year, while the influential US Preventive Services Task Force guidelines recommend a mammogram every two years starting at age 40.
For the new study, Zuley’s group used a large institutional database that included more than 8,100 women who had undergone at least one mammogram before being diagnosed with breast cancer.
Recently, the Journal of Clinical OncologyZuley and colleagues found that the percentage of breast cancer patients diagnosed with late-stage cancer (stage IIB or worse) increased with the time interval between mammograms.
Overall, 9 percent of women who had annual screening had late-stage cancer. In comparison, the figure was 14 percent for women who had mammograms every two years and 19 percent for women who had screenings “intermittently” (with an interval of at least 27 months between screenings).
Of course, with more frequent mammograms comes an increased risk of a woman receiving a false-positive result, which can lead to unnecessary concern and medical intervention.
“We recognize that there is potential harm in recalling women for additional screenings, but I do not believe that this harm outweighs the risk of missed cancers and women dying from them,” Zuley said in a university news release. She is also chief of the Breast Imaging Division at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
“We are also working to test screening tools that have fewer false positives than mammography and are working on all fronts to find the most cost-effective and accurate way to care for our patients,” she added.
More information
The American Cancer Society has its own guidelines for breast cancer screening.
SOURCE: University of Pittsburgh, press release, August 26, 2024
