"Leading Physicians At Odds Over Age For Women To Ramp Up Breast Cancer Screenings"
The American College of Physicians is out with new guidance that says women over 50 with average risk should get mammograms every other year. Medical organizations try hard to use scientific evidence to arrive at these guidelines. The trouble is that many of the studies use mammogram data that came from older, outdated technology. Modern digital, 3-D mammography is much more sensitive. That’s part of the disagreement. “One out of six women who get breast cancer, get breast cancer in their 40s,” said Laurie Margolies, MD, FACR, director of breast imaging at the Dubin Breast Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “If over the course of a lifetime women who are now in their 30s wait until they’re 50 to get screened, and then only every other year, about 100,000 women are likely die of breast cancer that need not have died.”
— Laurie Margolies, MD, FACR, Director, Breast Imaging, The Dubin Breast Center of the Tisch Cancer Institute, Professor, Radiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai