Screen Breast Cancer earlier

There has been some controversy over whether mammograms should be done at 40 or 50 for woman following the guideline issued by United States Preventive Services Task Force recently.

Now the American College of Radiology (ACR) and the Society of Breast Imaging (SBI) have issued a joint and firm recommendation that screening mammography should be done annually starting from the age of 40 for women at average risk of breast cancer. This contradicts the earlier guideline issued by the United States Preventive Services Task Force which made the recommendation against early routine mammogram screening to spare some women from the unnecessary suffering and cost incurred due to false positive tests.

Women with high risk of breast cancer (referring to those women who have a strong family history of breast cancer and those who have mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes) should have the screening mammogram done earlier at the age of 30. This high risk group of women should also go for annual MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) test since this is more sensitive in detecting breast cancer than mammogram

Mammography screening of breast cancer has significantly reduced the mortality from breast cancer. For most women this is a good enough reason to go for early screening since they would rather have their cancer detected earlier.