New breast cancer guidelines "unsafe": women

More than eight out of 10 women say new guidelines recommending against routine breast cancer screening of women under 50 are "unsafe," according to a small survey.

But most of the women also grossly overestimate their risk of developing the disease, researchers from the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester found.

"Indeed, they have been exposed to consistent and high profile media campaigns, endorsed by medicine and a variety of interest groups, that have indoctrinated them into the concepts that mammograms lead to early detection and early detection saves lives," the researchers write in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

The controversy over screening mammography flared up in late 2009, when a government-funded group of independent experts decided to change its recommendations.

Instead of advising annual mammograms in all women age 40 and above, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) said women shouldn't routinely get screened until they hit 50. And those between 50 and 74 should only have mammograms every two years.

What the group didn't say, however, is that no women under 50 should be screened. It left that up to the individual woman and her doctor to decide based on her personal risk factors and preferences.

But the USPSTF recommendations flew in the face of many years of aggressive PR campaigns, and met staunch resistance from advocacy groups, news organizations and medical groups alike.

To find out what women themselves think, Dr. Autumn Davidson and her colleagues gave questionnaires to 247 women in their 40s, who came to the hospital for an annual well-woman exam.

More than eight out of 10 of the woman said they wanted yearly mammograms, felt the new USPSTF guidelines were unsafe, and wouldn't delay screening until they turned 50.

Most of them also had an inflated sense of their breast cancer risk. On average, they put US women's lifetime risk of developing the disease at 37 percent.

Here's what scientists agree on: over their lifetime, 12 percent, or one in eight women, will get breast cancer.

According to Dr. Michael LeFevre of the USPSTF, about 30 out of 1,000 40-year-olds will die from the disease in the absence of screening.

If screening is started at 50 and done every two years until the women hit 75, seven of those deaths would be prevented. Starting at age 40 instead would stave off one additional death.

From an individual woman's point of view, that extra risk reduction is real, but quite small. And it comes with a price tag.

For some women, LeFevre said, mammography is a painful experience, and at least one in two who are screened annually throughout their 40s will trigger a false alarm - that is, the mammogram shows a suspicious mass that turns out not to be dangerous.