Co-author: Mammogram Study’s Advice ‘Misinterpreted’

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• JIM LEHRER:

  Now: new recommendations for breast cancer screening.

  Betty Ann Bowser of our Health Unit gets us started. The unit is a partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

• DR. SHAWNA WILLEY, Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center:

  Hello. How are you?

• PATIENT:

  I'm good.

• BETTY ANN BOWSER:

  The questions started at 7:00 this morning for Dr. Shawna Willey, a breast surgeon at the Lombardi Cancer Center at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C. Patients wanted to know what to do, after a government task force yesterday recommended most women wait until they're 50 years of age to get a mammogram.

• DR. SHAWNA WILLEY:

  And there's a lot of concern about this.

• BETTY ANN BOWSER:

  Dr. Willey's patients had questions because the new recommendations reversed the task force's earlier guidelines on breast cancer screening practices made in 2002.

• DR. SHAWNA WILLEY:

  The women are confused about what, I think, the outcomes are that are related to this paper. The take-home message may be that mammography doesn't detect breast cancer. And this does not say that at all.

  In fact, it says that mammography does detect breast cancer and it does decrease mortality across all age groups. So, I think the take-home message may be that — that mammography doesn't work. And I don't think that's the intended take-home message.

  So, the average-risk patient is trying to decide all of a sudden, what are we going to do? What is my doctor going to do? What is my insurance company going to do?

• BETTY ANN BOWSER:

  The new guidelines came from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent government-appointed panel under the Department of Health and Human Services.

  The task force said most women in their 40s should not routinely get mammograms, unless there is a high genetic risk of breast cancer. Women 50 to 74 should get a mammogram every two years. The task force gave no recommendation for women 75 and over and advised women not to be taught to do breast self-examinations. The group also said there's no evidence that breast exams performed by doctors yield any significant medical benefits either.

  Reaction from women in the D.C. suburb of Arlington, Virginia, was mixed today.

• JULIE KERN:

  It's concerning because it's been something that has just been driven into our, you know, kind of women's health care ,that that's something that you really need to get checked out, that, if you catch it early, it's treatable.

• DIANE FREEMAN:

  I think it's awesome. I think mammograms should be like every other year. Well, personally, I asked my doctor that. And she said she would rather that I do it once a year. But I would rather have it every other year.

• LEAH NOONAN:

  So, I'm not really sure what the details are, but it seems like it would be better to check sooner, because I know women, of course, that have gotten breast cancer before 50.