Reactions growing over mammogram recommendations
SPOKANE -- Reactions continue to pour in over a contentious recommendation from a government task force which recommended that women don't need to get mammograms until they're 50-years-old.
Currently recommendations call for women at age 40 and older to have a mammogram once a year. A government task force now says that's too much and is recommending women start mammograms at 50 and then only every other year.
Some local doctors say the information is interesting but before anything is changed more research needs to be done, adding that finding breast cancer in younger women is more rare than in women over 50 but it does happen and right now a mammogram is the best method for early detection.
Just ask Kellie Durgan.
"The radiologist calls me back into my office and says this looks like cancer," Kellie said.
At 43 Kellie found out during her annual mammogram she had breast cancer. Because it was caught early she didn't have to go through chemo or radiation.
"I didn't have to have all those horrible things associated with extended treatment," she said.
Dr. Stephanie Moline is a breast surgeon at Cancer Care Northwest and she says if people were to follow the task forces new recommendations she wouldn't know what to tell patients like Kellie who are younger than 50.
"It's very hard to tell them we don't need to help you, you didn't need to this, we would have found it eventually and that your breast concerns are not worthy of our financial attention," Dr. Moline said.
Dr. Moline says nationwide mammograms will only find cancer in one out of 2,000 women who get yearly screenings.
"We are finding something treatable and curable and the questions will be is worth it for us a society to help the few and have many women be screened when most of the woman won't get a benefit from that screening," she said.
So far this year Inland Imaging has given mammograms to 7,000 women between the ages of 40 and 49 and 11 of those women had cancer. Dr. Moline says she thinks its unfortunate this recommendation is coming out during a time when healthcare reform is at the top of everyone's mind.
"Everybody knows we are trying to save money on health care and this shows an unfortunate light that as we try to save money if we don't show an immediate monetary benefit in terms of woman lives saved it might get shorted," Dr. Moline said.
Kellie is one of those women whose life was saved and she says it's because of how early her cancer was found she is able to consider her cancer a gift.
"It had been different then it certainly would not have been the gift that it was," Kellie said.
Most industrialized nations have similar guidelines for mammograms that are in this new report. In addition to mammograms the government report says there is no need to teach self breast exams even though doctors say the exams are free, painless and have been effective in detecting breast cancer for some people.
Article courtesy of KXLY.