As the Senate prepares to debate health care legislation, a national government panel called the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has announced new recommendations for breast cancer detection. Current guidelines set out by the American Cancer Society urge women to begin annual mammograms at 40 years old. The new USPSTF guidelines call for a scaled-back approach, recommending that women begin mammograms at age 50 and have them every two years. Furthermore, they recommend that doctors stop pushing for monthly self-exams. If implemented, these guidelines would constitute one of the biggest changes in modern women’s health.
In 2009, there will be about 192,370 new cases of invasive breast cancer in the United States, representing approximately 13 percent of all new cancer cases and 27 percent of new cancer cases in women. Currently, women under 40, who are not recommended to receive annual mammograms, have a breast cancer survival rate of 83 percent. That number jumps to 91 percent for women over 40, many of whom have followed the American Cancer Society’s recommendation and begun to receive mammograms.
Taking into account that 8 percent survival rate increase into account, it makes perfect sense that the American Cancer Society and leading cancer hospitals, such as Sloan Kettering, are sticking with the old guidelines.
So why does all of this matter? Normally, a panel recommendation such as this one wouldn’t be so integral to cancer treatment. If President Obama’s administration and the Democrats in Congress get their way, a health care reform bill will be passed by early next year. While the current proposals are far from being finalized, there is no denying there will be a massive expansion of the health care system, putting millions of Americans at the behest of the federal government’s finances. Currently, private insurance companies choose which guidelines to follow regarding breast cancer prevention procedures. But when the health care reform overhaul passes, whose guidelines do you think the new federal system will use?
If government plans do abide by the new USPSTF guidelines, many cases of breast cancer could potentially go undetected until the cancer’s later stages, when the disease becomes far more aggressive and difficult to treat.
Limiting a woman’s access to life-saving detection tests would be no different than rationing health
care – which Obama has promised not to do. There have been arguments that the new guidelines will cut down on false-positive detections, and thereby reduce the number of unnecessary follow-up tests. How does USPSTF propose, however, that a doctor explain to a woman diagnosed with breast cancer under a government plan why she did not receive early detection services?
With regard to the other key recommendation of the panel, there is little logic in discouraging women from conducting breast self-exams. The panel cites a small sample of studies showing little benefit to self-exams, yet there is no downside to conducting them. They empower women to take their health into their own hands. Furthermore, they get women thinking about a disease that will affect one in eight of them. And, in some cases, they even lead to women discovering cancer in its early stages. Ultimately, if some women are denied access to mammograms before age 50, self-exams may become the most important thing a woman can do to ensure proper and early treatment. Let us hope that it doesn’t come to that.
Dave Hammerman is a junior in the McDonough School of Business and a staff writer for
Hoya Sports.
*To send a letter to the editor on a recent campus issue or Hoya story
or a viewpoint on any topic, contact
[opinionthehoya.com](opinionthehoya.com). Letters should not exceed
300 words, and viewpoints should be between 600 to 800 words.*”
