Mammography Screening: U.S. Health Authority Changes Recommendations
November 18th 2009 -
The U.S. health authorities have changed the recommendations for mammography screening. Women between 40 and 49 years should not participate in routine tests for breast cancer, said the authority of Preventive Medicine (U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, USPSTF). In this age group was the damage is greater than the benefits of writing, the experts said in a statement.
There were too many false positives for breast cancer and too few women rescued. The decision to cancer early detection under investigation the chest in this age group was taken individually and depends also on the personal risk factors for breast cancer. The USPSTF recommends mammography screening every two years for women between 50 and 74 years.
In women who were older than 75 years, there was no evidence that early detection actually useful. Because here more slow-growing types of breast cancer would be diagnosed with low aggressiveness, which would no longer cause harm to the women in his lifetime. A breast cancer therapy is burdensome and unnecessary in this age group, the authors write.
The USPSTF had evaluated the data from the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium (BCSC). The database contains information on approximately six million mammography examinations and 74,000 breast cancer cases. It incorporates a total of 600,000 records from the years 2000 to 2005.
In Germany, the breast cancer screening has been offered since 2004 for all women between 50 and 69 years. The first results from the year 2009 that were nearly 20 percent of the tumors detected in situ cancers, that is, or early forms of cancer precursors. About 30 percent of invasive breast tumors were smaller than ten millimeters, and in more than two-thirds of breast cancers detected, the lymph nodes were not affected.
However, the participation rate was only 54 percent. Across Europe but demanded a quota of 70 percent. The breast cancer screening for over ten years, three out of 1000 women die of breast cancer without screening there are four. One in four women diagnosed may actually be saved.
Tags: Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium, Mammography Screening, the lymph nodes
