Women 80 and older should continue mammograms, study says: Study: Early detection aids treatment

Women 80 and older should continue mammograms, study says: Study: Early detection aids treatment

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

04-23-08

Apr. 23–Women in their 80s have gotten little attention in the debate over who should have mammograms, but a new study reported Tuesday that they do benefit from X-ray screenings.

Hoping to clear up confusion, researchers at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston found that two-thirds of the elderly women who had regular mammograms had breast cancer detected at the earliest stage, compared with only a third of women who didn’t have the test.

As a result, more women receiving mammograms were able to have their tumors removed with surgery, which had the best chance of a cure, or could receive less-invasive or less-debilitating treatments, the study said.

The results should encourage doctors to urge older patients to keep getting mammograms, if they are healthy, said Dr. Mary Hayes, medical director of women’s imaging services at the tax-assisted Memorial Healthcare System in Hollywood. The study found that only a fifth of women in their 80s received regular screenings.

“If you have an 80-year-old woman in good health … there’s good reason to continue [her] annual mammogram,” Hayes said.

Mammogram recommendations vary slightly. The American Cancer Society recommends annual tests after age 40. The National Cancer Institute urges an X-ray test every year or two after age 40, depending your individual risk factors. Other groups suggest stopping at age 75 or if the woman has other disease.

Hayes said despite the study, she will not recommend mammograms for women with severe conditions such as heart, liver and kidney failure who are not expected to live at least five years. Those women may not be strong enough to survive risky treatments needed if cancer is detected, and would not see much of an increase in survival even if the cancer were cured, she said.

“There is not one size fits all,” Hayes said. “We’re getting more into tailored medicine. We look at risk factors and other things to give us guidance.”

The M.D. Anderson study looked at 12,368 women over age 80 who were diagnosed with breast cancer from 1996 to 2002. Among those who had regular mammograms, 68 percent had breast cancers detected at stage 1 before spreading, compared with 56 percent of those who had occasional tests and 33 percent of those who never had them.