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Comment by mter | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know when we decreased the age for recommended mammograms to 40? My assumption is that it's in the time range of the article.

I can only find references to us raising the recommended age to 45 in 2015, controversy over raising it to 50 in 2009 and how there are diverging opinions on when they should be done.

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This is very controversial - in short, there is no national recommendation for mammogram screening to start at 40 years.

Multiple professional organizations disagree (see below). For the societies that recommend age 45, they suggest that concerned women speak with their doctor regarding earlier screening.

Importantly, note that screening looks for signs of a disease in asymptomatic, normal-risk individuals. The presence of a family history or a lump/mass moves one from the category of screening into that of diagnosis.

Age 40: https://www.acr.org/About-Us/Media-Center/Press-Releases/201... - College of Radiology

https://www.acog.org/About-ACOG/News-Room/News-Releases/2017... - America College of Gynecology

Age 45: http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2463262 - American Cancer Society

Age 50: https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/Page/Document/... - United States Preventive Services Task Force

Mammograms are pretty bad for cancer detection in most women. Most of the time it is really hard to tell from it (too much noise) to say anything conclusive. So doing it earlier or later does not change the fact that its a very imperfect method.

I think brca status matters more as that classified high risk.

The GP is asking about recommendations for routine screening in asymptomatic women at average risk of breast cancer.

Screening and/or prophylactic treatment for high risk women is a different topic entirely and probably highly individualized.

Switzerland bans mammography.

They stopped recommending screening. But they did not ban mammography.

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