Black women considered high risk need earlier screening
New American College of Radiology® (ACR®) breast cancer screening guidelines now call for all women — particularly Black and Ashkenazi Jewish women — to have risk assessment by age 25 to determine if screening earlier than age 40 is needed. The ACR continues to recommend annual screening starting at age 40 for women of average risk, but earlier and more intensive screening for high-risk patients. The new ACR guidelines for high-risk women were published online May 3 in the Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR).
Other Notable Updates:
“The latest scientific evidence continues to point to earlier assessment as well as augmented and earlier-than-age-40 screening of many women — particularly Black women and other minority women,” said Debra Monticciolo, MD, FACR, primary author of the new guidelines and division chief, Breast Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. “These evidence-based updates should spur more-informed doctor-patient conversations and help providers save more lives.”
Factors that contributed to the ACR reclassification of Black women and other minorities to high-risk include that, compared to non-Hispanic white women:
“Since 1990, breast cancer death rates in Black women, who develop and die from the disease earlier, have only dropped approximately half as fast as in white women,” said Stamatia Destounis, MD, FACR, co-author of the new guidelines, chair of the American College of Radiology Breast Imaging Commission and managing partner at Elizabeth Wende Breast Care in Rochester, NY. “We continue to regularly examine the latest evidence and update our recommendations to help save more Black women and others at high risk from this deadly disease.”
According to National Cancer Institute Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) data, since mammography became widespread in the 1980s, the U.S. breast cancer death rate in women, unchanged for the previous 50 years, has dropped 43%. Breast cancer deaths in men, who have the same treatment as women but are not screened, have not declined.
For more information regarding the proven effectiveness of regular mammography screening at reducing breast cancer deaths, please visit RadiologyInfo.org, MammographySavesLives.org and EndTheConfusion.org.
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