Recently, the American Cancer Society released new breast cancer screening guidelines. Joan Felkner, director of the Cancer Information Service in the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. Joan,
What prompted the American Cancer Society to review and change the guidelines used for screening breast cancer?
There were several major scientific studies that prompted the review and some changes in the guidelines for screening for breast cancer.
What changes are suggested for early detection?
One of the changes is now the breast self-exam is an option for women starting in their 20s. Before they recommended that women do monthly self-exams. One of the reasons for the change is they found that it really did not improve breast cancer mortality in women who were doing the self-exam. And the self-exams may lead to unnecessary biopsies.
So, women still need to be familiar with their breasts—how they normally feel—and they need to report any changes to their physicians promptly, but they don’t need to necessarily do a monthly self-exam. It’s an option now.
What factors cause a woman to be at a higher risk to develop breast cancer?
There are a number of risk factors, including:
- Age—it is most often found in women who are age 60 and older
- Personal history of breast cancer—you’re more likely to get breast cancer in the other breast if you’ve had breast cancer
- Family history—if your mother, sister, or daughter has had breast cancer you’re more likely to get breast cancer
- Changes in breast cancer genes 1 and 2
- If you were older when you have your first child or have no children
- If you started your menstrual periods before age 12 or go through menopause after age 55
- If you take hormonal therapy with a combined estrogen and progestin
- If you’ve had radiation therapy to the chest
- If your mother has taken DES
- If you’re overweight or obese after menopause
- A lack of physical activity
- Drinking more than one drink per day
Those are just some of the risk factors. What we know is that the majority of women who develop breast cancer don’t have any of these risk factors; so there are still things we don’t understand about breast cancer.
How can any woman establish her own personal risk for developing beast cancer?
There are some great Web sites out there where you can plug in answers to questions that will assess your risk and give you a percentage risk. If you visit the Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool www.cancer.gov/bcrisktool, it will take you into the tool that can assess your breast cancer risk and it will give you a percentage of your risk. |
