Breast Cancer recomendations cause debate

For years women have been told that they needed to perform self breast examinations and that they needed to have their first mammogram at the age of 40. But not anymore. The latest recommendations of the U.S. Preventative Task Force are that women in the age group of 40 to 49 do not need regular mammograms, nor do they need to worry about routine self evaluations any longer.

In several recent articles at cnn.com the controversial recommendations are cited and debated. Some of the leading breast cancer groups agree with the decision, and some do not. The Susan G. Koman Breast Cancer group recommends that women "be aware" of any changes in their breasts, but do not recommend that women be taught self breast exams. The American Cancer Society agrees. Both groups claim that they disagree with the new mammogram guidelines. They will continue to recommend that women in their forties have regular mammograms.
The greatest concern of the task force is that younger women (who are generally at a lower risk for breast cancer) will encounter more stress because of lumps that are found but are not a cancer threat. They cite health studies performed in Canada that found that there was no significant decrease in breast cancer deaths in women that performed self examinations versus women who did not.

One may wonder just who this task force is, and why it is so significant that they have made these recommendations. The United States Preventative Services Task force is a group of 16 "health care professionals" that base recommendations concerning preventative health procedures upon scientific studies. (It should be noted for the cynics out there that NONE of the doctors on the board are oncologists and that two of the members are affiliated with non-profit health insurance companies.) This task force, started in 1984 is currently considered to be the "leading independent panel of private-sector experts in prevention and primary care," according to their website. Their recommendations are closely watched and taken to be the standard by The American Health Insurance Plans, a company of over 1,300 health insurance providers. However, Kathleen Sebelius, Health and Human Services Secretary, said that while their recommendations are taken under advisement they do not set the policies for the United States.


When I started writing this blog article I was just trying to find something that interested me. As I have stated before, I am a cancer survivor so anything that deals with cancer peaks my interest, but as I started reading I got madder and madder! Then I started looking around at Google and found so much coverage of this story with so many other networks and groups. This really has people sitting up and taking notice. As well it should.
So, here is my take on this issue. The boiled down version, I hope. It seems to me that this just smacks of hypocrisy. According to one article I found on a cancer support site, written in 2002, the Task Force has been trying for years to change how we approach screening for breast cancer. For the last nine years… sounds like someone has an agenda. I fear that if too many people listen to these "findings" that the average woman will not have a yearly mammogram covered on their insurance policies. That could prove disastrous.
The only reasons I could find cited to change our current way of screening was some ambiguous reference to the "risks" of mammograms and the possibility of causing unneeded stress to younger women if they should happen to find a lump during self examinations. Seriously? Is that the best they can come up with after all this time? There was a source cited that found that younger women that performed routine self examinations of their breasts found a higher incidence of benign lumps. Is that what is being considered the extra stress? I would rather have a false alarm than to ignore a lump and find out years later that my stage three cancer could have been prevented if I had found it earlier. And to not teach young women to examine their own breasts but to tell them to "be aware of any changes" is asinine, in my opinion. How are young women going to know if there are changes if they don't know what their normal feels or looks like? When my oldest daughter turned 18 I took her to my women's health nurse practitioner Tina. Tina taught her how to perform a self exam and what was normal as well as what was not. Now she can tell us if something changes. I find it just disturbing that just as we (women) are getting some life saving procedures paid for as routine in our yearly visits to our health care providers, some group with an agenda comes along and now we will probably have to fight hard to keep them. It will prove interesting to keep an eye on this issue to see where it goes, and how it will affect us in the future. Let's hope we keep moving in a positive direction.