Earlier mammograms in women’s 40s could save 19% more lives, task force says

If you’re a woman in your 40s, you should be getting regular mammograms to screen for breast cancer every two years. That’s according to new recommendations by the same panel of experts that had previously suggested women should wait to start getting mammograms a full decade later, in their 50s.

Breast cancer accounts for almost 30% of new cancers in U.S. women every year, the American Cancer Society says, and one in eight women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime. So even though the median age for breast cancer diagnosis across all women is 62, many clinicians have been calling for earlier screenings in order to have a better chance of finding any cancer early, while it is still the most treatable.

So MarketWatch spoke with clinicians from the American Cancer Society and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to answer some of the most popular Google queries about mammograms and breast cancer screening. Here’s what you need to know. Research suggests that 3D mammography appears to find more breast cancers, and also lowers the chance of being called back after screening for follow-up testing. And 3D mammograms may be helpful for women with more dense breasts; dense breast tissue can hide cancers. And women with denser breasts are also at higher risk of developing breast cancer; scientists still aren’t sure why.

And this aligns with what health organizations including the American Cancer Society, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American College of Radiology have long recommended: beginning regular mammograms at 40. Then, the American Cancer Society recommends all women ages 45 to 54 get a mammogram every year. And it suggests that women ages 55 and older can switch to a mammogram every other year, or, they can continue annual screenings if they choose. And mammograms should continue as long as a woman is in good health and expects to live at least another 10 years.

The whole appointment may take an hour when you include giving your medical history and filling out paperwork. But the mammogram itself should only take five or six minutes per breast, Jochelson said, and so any discomfort is over soon. What are the side effects, if any, from a mammogram and mammogram radiation? A mammogram does expose you to a low dose of radiation, and health professionals including the Mayo Clinic note that the benefits of annual mammograms outweigh the risks posed by this amount of radiation.

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