To think mammograms should be from age 30?

[AutumnalNights]

I am shocked at the amount of women under 45 being diagnosed.
Just reading about another 42 year old (ex hollyoaks actress) who has stage 2, then of course Sarah Harding and Amy Dowden. My colleague who is 38 has had 3 friends all diagnosed or sadly died around late thirties.
So why are mammograms only offered as routine to women aged 50 and over when so many younger women are getting breast cancer?

I noticed that too. I've actually come off contraception in the last week and going back to good old condoms because of the risks associated with hormones and breast cancer. I'm a nurse and I've seen patients around 38-46 getting diagnosed. Very strange.

Your breast tissue is too dense for cancers to show up as reliably in the older age ranges when you are younger. You would potentially get more false negatives and positives, leading to missed diagnoses and people undergoing biopsies when they don't have cancers.

I was told that mammograms are less effective in terms of imaging on younger women with denser breast tissue. In my 30s, I used to have an breast ultrasound every three months covered by nhs-equivalent and had to pay for my own MRI every six months (BRCA2+) under the surveillance programme that was recommended at the time (2000s). I did have a mammogram yearly but the doctors said they couldn’t get good info from the images so it was done for the record rather than being a useful diagnostic tool.

Yes, Kylie was another.

I think it’s something to do with breast tissue

It's because the risk doesn't outweigh the benefit at that age. Mammograms are less accurate at reading dense breast tissue, which younger woman have. Mammograms also use xrays, which are also more risky at a younger age and you'd be having more of them if you started at 30. You could risk the mammogram causing a breast cancer instead of diagnosing one.

Symptomatic younger ladies usually have other imaging to look for problems, such as ultrasound. In short, screening routinely younger women would cost massive amounts of money for very very little benefit

It's very common (and normal) for younger women to have extremely dense breast tissue and mammograms miss something like 50% of cancers in dense breasts.

It's not an ideal screening tool for younger women.

Do you have any data or studies that support your suggestion that the contraceptive pill is causing breast cancer in women under 40? Because that is what you’re inferring, I think?

I had an ultra sound early 30’s due to a lump . I was told the same as Pp mammograms wouldn’t show issue

Mammograms are ineffective if you have dense breasts, which younger women do. They can miss up to 90% of cancers. I had breast cancer twice, and mammograms didn’t see the cancer twice- even though the tumours were many centimetres each.

It is true.
Breast Cancer Now the research and support charity state that oestrogen contraceptive pill can slightly increase your risk of breast cancer. Once you stop taking it, in a few years your risk reverts back to what it would have been had you not taken the oestrogen pill.
I had breast cancer (oestrogen type) and my DD was advised to stop taking her oestrogen contraceptive as a precaution.

breastcancernow.org/about-breast-cancer/awareness/breast-cancer-causes/the-pill-contraception-and-breast-cancer-risk/#:~:text=pill%20cause%20cancer%3F-,Taking%20the%20contraceptive%20pill%20slightly%20increases%20your%20risk%20of%20breast,pill%20(mini%2Dpill).

I just wish there was a safer screening method for younger women. It doesn't seem right that so many my age or younger get hit with a diagnosis out of the blue, often of which is at a progressive stage. Of course we should all do our own checks but I think some women believe they are too young to get breast cancer when lately all I seem to hear about is younger women getting it. It's very worrying.

@Plmnki @lightsandtunnels answered your question for me. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying that it'll cause it but it does increase the risk and with 3 young children I want to ensure I've done everything to minimize that risk..however, if BC is down to genetics there is not an awful lot one can do about it.

My mother also works in a hospice and she's also had women as young as 30 dying with metastatic BC lately. It's absolutely terrifying at the best of times but for it to be happening to women this young 😢

I had a scare myself in June, had been BF but stopped when my baby was around 6 months old and I had a lump attached to my nipple. Rationale told me blocked milk duct but I was referred to the breast clinic anyway and it was put down as that after that gave me an ultrasound. However, the sonographer did advise me not to check for lumps everyday/every week as you are more than likely to miss one doing it that often apparently! Once a month is advised.

Just having a read of this thread and I also came off the pill before dd2 (ironically! Then she appeared...😂) because I'd had a few scares and trips to the breast clinic. Thankfully it was a fatty lump, but on the report it mentioned me having significantly dense breasts for my age (or worded something like that, I was 28 at the time), and there was a conversation about the mini pill and breast lumps being a side effect - this was enough for me to come off it.

Not saying it's the case for everyone, but for me, it really worried me so I just came off it

When I was undergoing treatment for breast cancer I was shocked at how many young women were in clinics.
It's true that mammograms are less effective in pre menopausal women. There should be more focus on awareness.

Mammograms show up thicker areas of breast tissue which appear white and dense compared to the rest of the breast, so they're not effective at picking up cancer in younger women with firmer breasts in general.
I think the focus should be on getting women to actually check themselves from a young age.

HRT seems to generally thicken up my breast tissue, does this mean mammograms will be inaccurate?

I agree loads of younger women are getting it now. My sister has bc stage 4 and knows a few women her age early thirties who have passed from it

I was diagnosed with BC at 36. I needed an ultrasound and biopsies to confirm it as younger women's breast tissue is too dense to identify areas of concern via mammograms.
Breast cancer is awful but the biggest proportion does happen to older women (not that that's ok obviously!).
I am BRCA2+ so there was a genetic inevitability about mine, but there are a lot of things we can do to reduce risk in terms of lifestyle changes.

Exactly this. I was called for my first mammogram at age 50 and after the first mammogram I had a recall saying I needed more screening. I was very upset and very scared. However, up to 40% of women are recalled after a first mammogram at 50 because of denser tissue and because they have nothing to compare images to.

The screening starts at 50 for sound, medical reasons. Women under 50 should understand their risk is less, but should still examine themselves regularly and report anything not normal for them to the GP.

We should push for more research and identification of better screening methods for younger women. Are any of the cancer charities funding this type of work?

The incidence of breast cancer in men aged 60-70 is higher than that in women between 30-40 (although the disease is more aggressive in the younger woman)
Should we be doing mammograms in older men.

There should be additional diagnostic tools available to assess dense breasts for cancer, especially for younger women. Dense breast tissue can make it more difficult to detect abnormalities using standard mammograms, so enhanced screening methods like ultrasound, MRI, or 3D mammography (tomosynthesis) should be more accessible to provide accurate diagnoses and improve early detection for this population

Ultrasound doesn’t use ionising radiation, whereas mammograms do.

Ultrasound does is better to use in younger women due to their denser breast tissue

My friend recently discontinued HRT because it was causing her breasts to be lumpy. The constant stress and investigation of lumps meant the negative outweighed the positive of HRT for her.

In Australia you can request ultrasound in addition to mammogram if you have dense breast tissue. I’m not sure if this is a possibility on NHS.