JANUARY 11, 2016, 6:41 PM LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, JANUARY 12, 2016, 7:11 AM
BY LINDY WASHBURN
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
New recommendations about breast cancer screening — when to start, and how often to do it — were released Monday by a federal task force, but they appear unlikely to have much influence on doctors’ practices in New Jersey.
The guidelines by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force update their previous recommendations, which led to a public outcry about rationing health care in 2009. That year’s most controversial recommendation — that women in their 40s at average risk of breast cancer should decide for themselves whether to start having screening mammograms every other year — was repeated this time.
Women in their 40s “must weigh a very important but infrequent benefit (a reduction in breast cancer deaths) against a group of meaningful and more common harms,” including callbacks for more imaging studies, biopsies for findings that turn out not to be cancer, and treatment of cancers that would not become life-threatening, the recommendations said.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/little-enthusiasm-in-nj-for-new-breast-screening-guide-1.1489540
