Women aged 40 to 49 not recommend for routine breast cancer screening

Women aged 40 to 49 are not recommended for routine mammography screening for breast cancer, said the new guidelines issued by the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care in media reports Tuesday. The new guidelines are purposed to direct doctors on using mammography, MRI scans, clinical breast exams and breast self-exams. In principle, they pointed out, there is no need for women to take clinical breast exams and breast self examination if there are no signals for breast cancer. Below are the main points from the guidelines which need special attention from women with reasonable doubt on the matter: Women aged 40-49 who have lower risk for cancer should not take routine mammography because of the higher risk for overdiagnosis, overtreatment and false-positives; Women aged 50 to 69 years and aged 70 to 74 years should go for routine screening every two to three years; And there should be no routine clinical breast exams by doctors and no breast self-exams to screen for breast cancer. Dr. Marcello Tonelli, Chair of the Task Force and Associate Professor at the University of Alberta, remarked: "The main effect of screening is to produce patients with breast cancer from among healthy women who would have remained free of breast disease for the rest of their lives had they not undergone screening." "The best method we have to reduce the risk of breast cancer is to stop the screening program," he added, "This could reduce the risk by one-third in the screened age group, as the level of overdiagnosis in countries with organized screening programs is about 50 percent."