Breast Cancer Awareness Month: Screening recommendations

We’re continuing our series of reports to mark "Breast Cancer Awareness Month.”  

This week, we focus on screening recommendations. 

The choices you make about exercise, diet and other behaviors can shape your complete health, as well as your exposure for developing breast cancer. 

It’s also important to follow recommendations for breast cancer screening.

Mammograms are used to find cancer, especially if you have no symptoms.  

Dr. Janelle Strom, of East Cascade Women’s Group, says when you begin screenings, and consistent screenings give you the best chance of finding breast cancer early, when it’s on a small scale, before it spreads. 

Also, the mammogram is the gold standard for screening for breast cancer, beginning at age 40.

Through the years there has been conflicting information and changes regarding the mammogram recommendations. 

Dr Strom said: “If we recommend a screening test and then we have false positives that lead to unnecessary biopsies and patient anxiety and increase cost, that is what we refer to as a ‘harm’.”

Because of those “harms” Dr. Strom says, guidelines are continuously updated.

Dr. Strom notes, there is encouraging news.

Because of mammograms, deaths from breast cancer have significantly dropped, this according to the National Cancer Institute, since the use of mammograms started in the 1980s.

Breast cancer deaths have declined by more than 40%.