New York Times Examines Debate Over Mammography For Women Over 80

Main Category: Breast Cancer
Also Included In: Women's Health / Gynecology;  Seniors / Aging
Article Date: 10 Jul 2008 - 8:00 PST

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The New York Times on Monday examined the debate among physicians on the value of recommending that women ages 80 and older receive annual mammograms -- a debate that has arisen because of the paucity of data available for this age group because large clinical trials traditionally focused on younger people and excluded the very old.

Guidelines issued by HHS' United States Preventive Services Task Force set no cutoff age for breast cancer screenings and recommend a mammogram every year or two but says other conditions should be considered when deciding whether to screen patients. The American Cancer Society recommends annual mammography for all women over 40 and in good health, and the American Geriatrics Society recommends mammograms every two to three years for women ages 75 and older if their life expectancy is at least four years.

According to the Times, some experts question recommending annual mammograms to the population because it raises the "specter of frail women being dragged from nursing home beds to be screened for cancer when they are far more likely to die of heart disease or complications from a broken hip." Harvard University mammography and preventive care researcher Mara Schonberg said that less than 2% of women ages 80 and older die of breast cancer and that a physician's time would be better spent encouraging these patients to exercise and get immunizations, as well as discussing problems in their daily life.

A study published in May in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that among women ages 80 and older who were diagnosed with breast cancer, those who received regular screenings were more likely to find the disease early enough to avoid a mastectomy and survive at least five years than those who had not been screened for at least five years before their diagnosis. In addition, women who had mammograms not only were more likely to survive breast cancer, they were more likely to survive other conditions, according to the study's authors. "They could be surviving because they're healthier, and not because you did the screening," Gildy Babiera, the study's senior author and an associate professor of surgical oncology at the University of Texas' M.D. Anderson Cancer Center -- said, adding, "Healthy women were getting more mammograms, because they were able to go to a facility and undergo the procedure. And they could also withstand the cancer treatment" (Caryn Rabin, New York Times, 7/8).

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