Significant scientific evidence supports recommendations to start annual mammograms at age 40. This approach saves more lives than delayed or less frequent screening. We hope that you find this information useful.
- According to National Cancer Institute data, since mammography screening became widespread in the 1980s, the U.S. breast cancer death rate, unchanged for the previous 50 years, has dropped nearly 40 percent.
- Perhaps the largest (Hellquist et al) and longest running (Tabar et al) breast cancer screening studies in history, reconfirmed that regular screening cut breast cancer deaths by roughly a third in all women ages 40 and over (including women ages 40-49).
- A study in Cancer showed that more than 70 percent of women who died from breast cancer in their forties at major Harvard teaching hospitals were among the 20 percent of women not being screened.