Breast cancer starts to grow popularity among women, with contemporary life laying under serious health threats, due to increased level of stress, poor nutrition, lack of sleep and high exposure to other damaging factors. A new study shows that mammography screening reduces death risks among breast cancer patients, especially for middle aged women.
Patients with an age range between 60 and 69 years are 40% less exposed to death from breast cancer, compared to the ones that don’t perform such medical analysis on a regular basis. Apart from the mentioned age range, it seems that mammography generally reduces death among cancer patients with no less than 23%.
Furthermore, women between 70 and 74 years old also benefit from a lower degree of risk, but to a lesser extent. The results of the study are entirely noted in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Over time, mammography screening has been a long debated subject, starting with 2009, when the US Preventive Services Task Force declared that women should perform such tests on a regular basis Statistics show that women who are 50 and over must perform screening every two years. Doing so before the age of 50 doesn’t represent great improvement or chances of lowering risks and furthermore, it’s a question of personal choice, not a necessity.
Who should get mammograms and when has long been debated, especially since 2009, when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said women should be screened every two years starting at age 50, and that doing so before then does little good.
Experts from 16 countries have assessed all the impacts of various breast cancer screening method, and they based their findings on evidence from 11 randomized trials, along with 40 observational studies. Their results speak to the most general public worldwide, namely all the women who potentially suffer from breast cancer, and are addressed to all age ranges.
Middle aged women receive the strongest of recommendations as mammograms often offer false alarms that lead to costly follow-up tests. However, treatments improve and there is a high chance for the tests to find early shrinks in the progress of the illness.
This is a good alarm call for women in England especially, where there has been observed a decrease in attending screenings, with less than 40% of women performing mammography on a regular basis.
Image Source: cancer.dartmouth.edu
