Women should start screening for breast cancer at age 40 instead of 50, health task force says in draft recommendation
CNNMay 09, 2023
On Tuesday, the US Preventative Services Task Force issued draft guidance advising women with an average risk of breast cancer to begin receiving biennial screenings at age 40, a decade earlier than its previous recommendation of 50.
All women and individuals assigned female at birth, who are not at high risk of breast cancer, were in 2016 advised to decide individually in their 40s when to start getting screened.
This draft recommendation is a step in the right direction in the fight against breast cancer, aligning the Task Force with the American Cancer Society in recognizing that the benefits of screening outweigh its harms. Yet, there is room for further improvement, as the introduction of annual mammograms could help younger women and Black women find earlier-stage and aggressive cancers.
Though breast cancer screening has been promoted as life-saving, it has disproportionately caused more harm than benefit by increasing mastectomies and overdiagnosing healthy women, all while failing to catch cancer earlier. Despite seeming counterintuitive, avoiding mammograms reduces the risk of becoming a breast cancer patient by one third and protects people from unnecessary treatments like radiotherapy.
There is a 50% chance that the average survival rate of all cancers will exceed 75% by 2029, according to the Metaculus prediction community.