>> New guidelines out today say
women should begin getting
regular mammograms every two
years starting at the age of 40
if they are at average risk of
cancer.
That is a significant change
from previous guidance by the
U.S. Preventative services task
force that said women could
start routine mammograms at the
age of 50.
Stephanie sy focuses on what you
need to know.
Stephanie: This change comes
after an increase in diagnoses
of breast cancer among younger
patients and an alarming number
of deaths among black women who
are already 40% more likely to
die from breast cancer.
More than 43,000 women died of
cancer in the U.S. Each year.
The new guidelines would cover
more than 20 million women
between 40 and what he nine
years old who might be at risk,
but women with a family history
and genetic risk of breast
cancer are advised to get
screened earlier.
To help spell out the details of
the guidance, I'm joined by the
immediate past chair of the
United States preventive
services task force and
professor of medicine and public
health at UCLA.
Thank you so much for joining
"The newshour."
Among the reactions I'm hearing
to your task force's new
guidelines are finally, other
groups other than the American
cancer society have been
recommending mammograms for
women in their 40's for years,
but your task force has said for
years women should wait until
50.
>> Actually, your task force
says -- our task force says we
should use mammogram selectively
for women in their 40's, but
when the exclusive signs, we are
able to extend that
recommendation to all women.
If women are able to do this, it
will cause a reduction in death
from breast cancer have about
20%.
Importantly, you mentioned that
black women have a 40% higher
chance of dying of breast
cancer, so this recommendation
is very important for them.
They actually would have the
most benefit from starting
screening at 40 and using
screening every other year.
This is not going to totally
take care of that terrible
inequality.
When you think about breast
cancer care, starts with
screening, diagnosis, access to
state-of-the-art treatments, and
there are deficits in health
equity along that whole pathway,
so we have to improve all of
that before we see a similar
mortality for black women as for
white women.
>> Is their new evidence that
shows why women in their 40's in
particular, are seeing higher
rates of breast cancer?
>> There really is not.
We have an extremely urgent call
for research in our
recommendation to better
understand what is driving this
change.
>> Should women still be
concerned about the consequences
of over screening?
Experts were saying not long ago
that over screening was leading
to unnecessary treatment, even
harmful treatment.
Are you seeing now that the
benefits outweigh those risks?
Just clear that up for us.
>> The task force always
balances the benefits and the
risk as we see it in the medical
efforts.
We are certain that the benefits
far outweigh the risks if you
use mammography every other year
.
If you decide to have annual
testing and you are at average
risk, that means you're going to
have twice as many false
positives.
Some of those, a small amount,
could end up in a situation
where a woman is diagnosed with
cancer and she does not actually
have it.
These are harms that need to be
balanced against finding more
and earlier breast cancer.
It might help with surviving and
being healthy longer.
>> There still seem to be a lot
of unanswered questions.
Women over 74, for example, they
don't know if they should keep
doing mammograms.
Women like me, with dense breast
tissue, that's about 40% of
women -- they don't know if a
mammogram is enough to detect
cancer.
Should we know more about breast
cancer, a disease that affects I
believe one in eight women, than
we know now?
>> We absolutely should.
To your first point, women over
the age of 74 have been excluded
from clinical trials, and we
definitely need more research in
that group to know if stopping
at 74 is really the right
number.
For women with dense breasts,
which happens to be about half
the women in United States, we
also have an urgent call for
more research on what is the
best supplemental test to get,
when to start getting that test,
and how often to get it.
From if you're talking about
ultrasound or mri, those
questions are really unanswered
at this point.
>> We all know someone touched
by breast cancer.
I made my appointment for my
mammogram today.
Thank you.
>> You're welcome.