Women should get a mammogram every other year starting at age 40, according to new guidance issued Tuesday by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
It’s a considerable drop in age from the prior recommendations, which said women should start getting biennial screenings no later than age 50 and suggested that women in their 40s could talk to their doctor about getting screened.
The change, first released as a draft last year, is a response to rising cancer rates among women in their 40s, as well as evidence that earlier mammograms help save lives. The rate of breast cancer among women ages 40 to 49 increased 2% per year, on average, from 2015 to 2019, according to the National Cancer Institute.
“With this increasing incidence of breast cancer in women in their 40s, that points to mammography being even more beneficial,” said Dr. Wanda Nicholson, the chair of the task force.
The group, an independent panel of experts, estimated that its new recommendations — which were published Tuesday in the journal JAMA — could save up to 20% more lives relative to the old guidance.
Insurance companies often follow the task force’s recommendations when determining coverage and reimbursements, but many plans already cover mammograms for women starting at age 40.
Primary care doctors or obstetrician-gynecologists order mammograms — X-ray images of the breast — for their patients, and the service is typically provided by a technician at an imaging center or radiology department. Patients place each breast between two plates, then a machine takes X-ray images of their breast tissue.
If abnormal lesions are found in the scans, patients may need additional mammograms, an ultrasound or sometimes a biopsy or MRI to determine if cancer is present.
The task force’s new guidelines do not apply to women with a personal history of breast cancer, those who’ve had an abnormality on a previous biopsy or those with a genetic marker for breast cancer — those groups may need to be screened earlier and more frequently .
The recommendations also only apply to women up to age 74.
Some leading medical groups said the task force’s new guidance still does not go far enough.
The American Cancer Society recommends annual screenings — rather than every other year — for women ages 45 to 54, with the option to switch to biennial screenings once they turn 55. It does not recommend that women stop screenings at a certain age, as long as they are expected to live at least 10 more years.