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?

Is this true about men? Have you got the statistics for that?

I work in cancer treatment and we see a lot more women in their 30-40s than we see men in their 60s-70s

Screening is of debatable value at any age, but clearly not helpful under age 50.
And anecdotal evidence of a few young women with breast cancer doesn't tell us anything - it simply feeds paranoia.

From what I have seen most men will be treated with surgery and radiotherapy - younger women will need chemo pre and post surgery and will have a much longer period of treatment and more likely to recur.
Mammograms not good in young women

It's a bit debatable whether mammograms are effective even in the over 50s. Some countries are discontinuing the screening programmes.

Screening causes a lot of false positives, fear, needless further investigation and even suicide. It's not a risk free thing, and especially if the accuracy is low and cancer rates are also relatively low. You will reach a point where the amount of adverse effects outweighs the benefits of a small number of lives saved

I work in this area. In general breast cancer tends to be more aggressive in yoinger women which is awful but also harder to detect on mammography.
Breast svreening saves over a 1000 women a year from breast cancer in the uk so imo it is worth it.

Younger*

Mammograms don't save any women from breast cancer. They detect breast cancer that is already there.

The NHS's own leaflet states that they save 1 in 200 women from dying of BC, but that 3 in 200 will have unnecessary treatment, some of which can be life changing.

They should also do them for ladies over 71, without having to go begging for one

my mum was one of four ladies she knew who’d had breast cancer detected by ultrasound and missed by mammograms, they all had mammograms at the same time, they’d also been on previous or still using hrt but that’s probably coincidental, saying that I’m not going to use hrt

The only way to assess breast density is thru mammography. Breast density has nothing to to with size, firmness or how "perky" breasts look.

HRT does increase density in some women (not all), but only a mammogram will show that.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/mammogram/in-depth/dense-breast-tissue/art-20123968

I thought that breast cancer under age 50 was generally genetic/ hereditary. So maybe genetic screening would be more sensible and then people with a high risk mutation could be screened by mammogram more regularly?

I belong to a group of women who all had BC in the last ten years. We met during treatment but have remained friends. Most had it picked up at a mamogram but several were under 50.

One in particular has a sister and an aunt and mother who had BC but they say it's not hereditary becuase they don't carry the genetic markers.
I think there must be as yet unknown genetic factors.

There are always a bunch of anti screening folk who come on these threads.
Thousands of lives are saved by screening. It's not compulsory.

I'm really glad that medically trained professionals and scientists make decisions like this.

This would cause a lot of harm for negligible benefit. It would also be a very poor use of public funds in the context of an alreaey overstretched healthcare system. There is debate about the effectiveness of screening in >50s - see overdiagnosis/overtreatment/all cause mortality etc. Even regular self checking of breasts is no longer recommended as the evidence base does not support it.

You need to make decisions based on large studies over long periods of time. Of course a relative, acquaintance or even celebrity receiving a cancer diagnosis in their 30s is going to stick in one's mind vs an older person. But that can result in all sorts of cognitive biases that don't reflect incidence in population at large.

Michael Baum and Gilbert Welch are two prominent critics of breast cancer screening - worth reading . It is easy to fall into the fallacies of 'more is better' and 'prevention is better than cure'. Paradoxically, there are situations where they can make things much worse.

@Perroi I think you have misunderstood my post. I am not anti screening at all.
I was not suggesting less screening by mammogram but more, for those who are at higher risk but may not know at the moment because there isn't enough info about genetic breast cancer risks (whether the gene can currently be identified on testing or not). Everyone else would get the same as currently happens i.e. if you find a lump or are over 50.

@Geneticsbunny apologies I wasn't referring to your post, more the posts about false positives being a reason not to screen.

Anyone who is assessed as being at moderate risk e.g. two plus close relatives who have had BC can have an annual mammogram from 40. High risk e.g. BRCA1/2 carrier can have earlier screening. There is plenty of research into assessing risk from genetic and lifestyle factors which may well result in more targeted screening although no screening regime will be perfect and people would have to opt in. Given lots don't have smears I wonder how likely this is.

Link to NICE guidance. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg164/ifp/chapter/Early-detection-of-breast-cancer-by-surveillance

My DDs are advised to have screening from age 35. But what sort of screening I don’t know. Mammograms didn’t see my cancers twice, and they were big . hospitals said nothing was wrong with me.

And on personalised risk assessment. https://www.canrisk.org/

From the link it could be MRI depending on the BRCa risk.

harlacem0507
What did your nipple bump scare turn out to be? I recently had this too and am ultra paranoid. Mammorgram (though I have extremely dense breasts, age 35) showed nothing and so did ultrasound but I have an obvious bump under my nipple and it's also now mostly inverted. Having a second ultrasound in a few months to recheck.

Mammographer here. They are only offered as women under the age of 40 have denser breasts and therefore the cancers are hard to spot. Given that mammogeams use radiation and breasts are radio sensitive it is not thought to be justified.
However, several trials are looking at lowering the age limit.
Keep checking yoir breasts ladies ( and gentlemen).

Ooops already posted.

Not quite the same but if you have a strong family history of breast cancer you can have them earlier. Me and DSis will be having them from 49 annually because of our family history. But this had to be printed by us going to the doctors and being referred to breast care team etc