Occasionally, my mom will text me about something big going on in the news.  Its a way for her to keep me updated while I’m in my little college bubble, and I love it.  This morning she texted me about mammograms, and how there is a big debate going on right now about what age women should start getting them.  I figured I would look into it, and it would be a good topic for a blog.

What started the recent controversy was a new statement from the American Cancer Society.  They claim that it is now better for women to start yearly mammograms at 45, and then start going every other year at age 55.  Many people are upset about this because they feel that starting before age 45 would be more beneficial because you will be more likely to catch the cancer early.  According to the ACS, though, that isn’t the right plan of action.  They believe, through new studies, that the radiation from mammograms isn’t worth it before the age of 45.

I decided to look into the actual study done by The Journal of the American Medical Association. After doing several blogs, and looking into several studies, I think this is the most well-done study I have seen so far.  For each part of the study, they used at least 100,000 participants.  Even though it was an observational study, I think the results are trustworthy because patients can’t fake breast cancer.  The results show that the risks of having breast cancer and dying from it under the age of 45 are lower than the chances of having breast cancer over the age of 45 and dying from it.

The other issue with mammograms is that there are often many false positives.  People go through the pain of finding out they have breast cancer, only to find out later that they do not actually have it.  Moving the age of mammograms to 45 takes away the risk of having to go through the psychological struggle of thinking you have cancer, when in reality you don’t.  Along with the risk of receiving a false positive, women are unnecessarily exposed to radiation.  Each mammogram exposes each woman to .4 mSV (radiation).  To put that into perceptive, most people are exposed to 3 mSV just from the environment. While that may not seem like a lot, the extra 5 years of mammograms if you start at age 40 adds 2 mSV to your body, which is not good for you at all. Radiation affects almost every part of the body in a negative way.

Across the country, many people are upset about the new guidelines, especially breast cancer survivors.  They believe that early detection is important, but it doesn’t seem like they are taking the radiation factor into consideration.  Overall, after seeing the new research, I think it is smart to wait until 45 to get a mammogram.