Anjali, thank you so much for providing the statements of so many respected people and organizations. Our take on this information will undoubtedly be filtered by our own experience. It's important to remember that although younger women do get breast cancer, mammograms are not very good at finding those breast cancers because their breasts are dense. Women under fifty need to be alert to changes in their breasts and then be assertive with their doctors about getting the best imaging tests to find out what is going on. Maybe if less money were spent on annual mammograms for 40-49 year olds who have no symptoms, there would be more money for MRI's for women under 50 who find a lump or other change.
The other part of this recommendation that we need to keep in mind is that women in their forties who have cysts, who are high risk, who find a lump, or who have other breast problems would still be having mammograms.
I'm still mulling over this information and trying to decide what I think about it.
Don't forget, self breast exams are NOT recommended so how are these new lumps to be found? It seems this situation is saying women are disposable. Are these men who are recommending the new limitations? I have dense breasts like younger women and I'm 66, should I be denied mammograms because of the dense breasts? I think not.
Anjali, I really, really appreciate seeing all of this information in one place. It makes it so much easier to try to absorb it and make sense of the government's new guidelines. Bottom line - my mind accepts it, my heart doesn't. I'm sickened by statements like "80% of the benefit with only half the cost." The 20% of the benefit that's lost? Women's lives. But here's the rub: Government acts in the interests of "society" - which means the aggregate, not individuals. If policy was created for individuals, young people would never be sent off to fight and be killed in wars. Not to say that this can't change, and government won't someday be more attuned to the vast gray areas that statisticians never see; but today, right now, the government did its job in the best interests of its 250 million+ citizens, as a whole.
Of everything I've read today, what really resonated with me the most was the thought that with more accurate, low-cost screening tools, the cost/benefit equation would shift. I was recently speaking with a researcher who told me he's looking at 4 new screening devices. And I know Susan Love is concentrating on making a connnection between nipple fluid and cancer, using a simple test that withdraws a bit of fluid. What if there was a simple breast cancer screening tool that was 99% accurate? Let's hope that researchers keep working on this and find a solution SOON. - PJH
I had my breast cancer caught by the mammogram when I was 48. According to these new guidelines, I wouldn't have had my first mammogram until 50 - if I survived the cancer's progression.
I do not agree with their rationale. I hate to think of the number of women whose health may be jeapardized because of these new guidelines.
The thing to look at closely here is the government being involved. That is scary. They want to take over health care. If they do there will be more and more restrictions on what insurance will cover. We will find that there will be more life saving, or preventitive measures taken away from us. Every life matters. Some women don't even have any warning signs of breast cancer. You can't just wait around waiting for some sign that you have cancer. There has to be preventitive measures. Yes, we do need to move on with technologies that can supply up with better diagnoses and find a cure, but in the mean time we need to save lives now with what we do have available.
I think this new recommendation is just a ploy to cut the cost of healthcare. I believe that when insurance companies approved the payment of mammograms as part of the preventative health care benefit, they left it to the doctors discretion when to begin this testing. Now that government wants to cut spending, they will begin with the women's benefits. I also suspect it is a back door way to placate the doctors and protect them in the area of medical malpractice. Since the current health care bill as it is now written doesn't give the doctor's any malpractice relief. This would do just that in the event of a missed diagnosis.
As a retired nurse/attorney and a breast cancer survivor I am completely apposed to this if it interfers with coverage for mammograms as part of a wellness approach to a woman's health.
How soon might we expect to get the governments word that smoking DOESN'T kill people in their attempt to increase the sale of tobacco products and reap the benefit of high taxes? It wouldn't surprise me one bit.
Being a breast cancer survior I do not agree with the guidelines issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. If it wasn't for my routine mammogram at the age of 47 I would have never been diagnosed. At the time I didn't know that my Aunt had breast cancer who is my dad's sister. If I had to wait till I was 50 yrs old I don't know if amy treatment would have helped me. Not only did I have a lumpectomy but I was was diagnosed within ten months later with new califications on the same breaat above my lumpectomy. I chosed to have a double mastectomy because on my left breast I had atyical hyperplasia.
I was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago at age fifty-seven; as I was going throgh radiation I met a young woman who was diagnosed at twenty-eight. She went through chemo and radiation; no one in her immediate family had been diagnosed with breast cancer. I have also met other women in their thirties and forties, as well as over eighty wohm have been diagnosed with breast cancer. I resent that our government is going the way of universal health care and have written to the White House with my concerns. Other countries would love to have this system. I also feel that it needs to be revised. I am fighting to have my mammogram re-submitted to the billing department at the hospital and my insurance company, because it was written by my Oncologist and my imsurance is not paying for it because it was not written as routine and I did not make my decuctible yet this year. Next year we are foing with Aetna, which at this time my Oncologist does not accept. My deductible will be over one thousand dollars and I will most likely not have the finances to meet that deductibel either.
As a woman diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 42, I credit screening mammography for saving my life. As we often hear from breast cancer survivors, I had no known risk factors - no family history and no reason to believe I would ever be diagnosed. I am also a mammography technologist and see countless women in their 30s and 40s who fall into the same no-risk category and also receive that dreaded news. However, according to the US Task Force, I guess there aren't enough of us to count when we consider the overall cost of screening, diagnostic workup and subsequent biopsy if needed. With Full Field Digital Mammography available now in 58% of the mammography facilities in this country, we will be able to find more early breast cancers in younger women. Early detection is important because small breast cancers detected on a mammogram are curable cancers. Women, speak up! Don't let the government take away our right to mammography beginning at age 40 on an annual basis. I suspect this is the beginning of rationed health care.
How sad it this that saving money out weighs that value of human life. Now more than ever breast cancer has increased in the area where I live. My mother and her sisters all died from breast cancer. It upset me greatly to know that my daughter and nieces will not have a mammogram until age 50.
Perhaps it is time to start speaking up for all women and take responsibility for valuing life instead of the almighty dollar.
Are they crazy?! I was 33 when I was diagnosed and I found it myself with a self breast exam, confirmed the 9cm mass by a mammogram. We have NO familty history. I would be dead if I couldn't have gotten a mammogram. I know several patients who are younger than me by a decade but are diagnosed. They are going to wrong way! Mammograms need to start at age 30 and self breast exam needs to be taught to men and women from puberty on! Yea we have to find a cure, but in the meantime they want al lof us who get it to die? I'm horrified.
I don't think this group of scientist have any idea of what they are doing. THEY REALLY DIDN'T LOOK at the statistics of breast cancer annually. Every 10 women 3 get cancer (genetics, hormone replacement environmental etc etc) Of three friends I have with cancer all of them are under 45 and the daughter of another friend she was 26 when the cancer was found. Where are these people finding the results and where are they doing this research??? Many women are survivers thanks to the mammograms and early testing and detection. Sorry but they don't have a clue of what they are doing and if they 'change their minds in two or three years it will be too late for many women. Shame on them for NOT DOING the right research and investigation.
I love this article and the comments that follow, because it gives me a comprehensive view of the issues. Personally, as a survivor I advocate early screening, until something better comes along. See my blog post, "3 Ways to Detect Breast Cancer" for more.
Here is what can be done now to prevent these unbelievable breast cancer screening guidelines from being adopted.
1) Contact the members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force directly and let them know of your dissatisfaction. Tell them you expect them to rescind their support for these guidelines immediately. The USPSTF website link below has the Task force member's names and their employers.
http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/uspstfab.htm#Members
2) Contact the institutions employing the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force members and request that these people's employment be reviewed and in the strongest terms request that they be removed.
3) Contact the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which is part of the US Department of /health and Human Services and request two things. First ask that all future meetings and discussions by the USPSTF be held in public and not behind closed doors. Second, request that the current members of the USPSTF be removed due to bad judgment and incompetence. See web link below.
http://www.ahrq.gov/
4) Contact your elected official and request that they require that all future meetings and discussions by the USPSTF be held in public and not behind closed doors. Also request that any report written by the USPSTF be open for public review and comment for at least three months before final publication and that ALL public comments and feedback be included in an appendix in the back of the report.
5) Also, when contacting your elected official ask that all public funding of research, studies or medical support from the federal government be reconsidered and be removed from the employers of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force members.
6) Lastly when contacting your elected officials request that they guarantee and allow that legal action can be taken (class-action or individual) against any insurance company, health care organization or hospital that adopts these draconian breast cancer screening guidelines as wrongful death, or negligence against the victim.
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I am 34 and have breast cancer.
I would be dead by 50 if these guidelines had their way.
I already had my first doctor say tht my TUMOR was NOTHING in FEBRUARY. Now I have to have chemo.
I wonder...had my doc sent me for a mammogram in february, I may not have had cancer in the lymph node...who knows.
These guidelines are a death sentence for young women UNDER 40. No one seems to talk about them in this report...
from Breastcancer.org:
"The proposed guideline changes would mean that younger women would be diagnosed later. Breast cancer in younger women tends to be more aggressive, so early diagnosis and treatment is more critical for them. It is the lives and futures of younger women that would be lost if the proposed changes are adopted."
I agree with you +++100%. Who are these %$#@ "scientist??" that are putting women in danga\erous situation. I don't think they would be doing this if their daughters or wifves or mothers were sick or had cancer. In USA, every 10 women 3 had cancer of the breast and every day are more and more cases. Most of them under 50 and most of them with no genetic or family history of cancer. So I ask them How THIS WOMEN are going to find out they have cancer or have a problem before it becames bad. No when poisonous enviroment, hormones and chemicals, etc etc. are a big part of the problem. They only have to compare cancer rates and deaths 50 years ago with the last 10 years.