A large national study in JAMA Internal Medicine has found that the rate of women receiving breast MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) nearly tripled from 2005 to 2009: from four to 11 exams per 1,000 women.
One year after GHRI Research Associate Evette Ludman, PhD, coached nurse navigators to help cancer patients with difficult treatment decisions, she discovered the work’s value in a very personal way.
Screening for breast cancer every two years appears just as beneficial as yearly mammograms for women age 50–74, with significantly fewer “false positives”—even for women whose breasts were dense or who used hormone therapy for menopause.
Among older women, getting a mammogram every two years was just as beneficial as getting a mammogram annually, and led to significantly fewer false-positive results, according to a Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium (BCSC) study including patients and researchers from Group Health. The national study of more than 140,000 women between ages 66 and 89 is in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Serious questions remain about how best to balance screening’s benefits with its potential harms, including false-positive test results, overdiagnosis leading to invasive treatment for non-life-threatening conditions, and repeated exposure to radiation.
hoosing when to start regular breast cancer screening is a complicated decision for individual women and their providers. For most women, increasing age is the biggest risk factor for breast cancer, which is much more common at age 60 than at 40. But two new articles on other risk factors may inform guidelines and clinical practice about screening mammography from age 40 to 49.
Should women start breast cancer screening at age 40 or 50? Every year or every other year? By mammography or breast MRI? As patients and physicians ask these and related questions, confident answers require solid evidence.
Land Acknowledgment
Our Seattle offices sit on the occupied land of the Duwamish and by the shared waters of the Coast Salish people, who have been here thousands of years and remain. Learn about practicing land acknowledgment.