Appeal to screen under-40s for breast cancer
THOUSANDS more women could benefit from yearly breast cancer screening, research reveals today.
Current guidelines recommend annual screening for women aged 40-49 in England who are at moderate or high risk of the disease.
However, Breast Cancer Now said offering scans to up to 86,000 more women who are aged 35-39 and have a family history of breast cancer could help catch tumours earlier.
A large-scale trial of annual mammograms for this group saw the proportion of tumours detected before they reached 2cm almost double from 45 to 80 per cent.
Baroness Delyth Morgan, chief executive at Breast Cancer Now, which funded the study, said: “This could be an enormous breakthrough on early detection in young women with a family history of breast cancer.
“We believe these findings could be practice-changing and urge the Government and NHS England to ensure the upcoming review of NHS screening programmes sets out what further evidence will be needed to consider annual screening for women aged 35-39 who are at increased familial risk of breast cancer.”
During the study, almost 3,000 women aged 35-39 with a moderate or high risk of breast cancer due to family history were offered annual screenings between 2006 and 2015.
In total, 50 breast cancers were detected, of which 35 were invasive tumours.
Of these, 80 per cent were detected by screening when the tumour was
2cm or smaller and only 20 per cent had spread to the patients’ lymph nodes.
Study lead author Professor Gareth Evans, of the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre, said: “Our trial shows that mammography screening is effective in detecting tumours earlier in this younger age group.
“Longer-term follow-up is now required to determine the impact of
this screening on women’s overall survival and any impact on their future risk of primary breast cancer.”
One in eight women will develop breast cancer at some point in their lives and more than 55,000 are diagnosed every year in the UK.
It is estimated that around five to 15 per cent of cases are linked to a family history of the disease.
Baroness Morgan added: “This major trial suggests that screening
could be vital in women as young as 35, who we know are at increased risk. We’ve long known that a family history can define a woman’s risk, and that breast cancer can be more aggressive in younger women.
“So, if we can intervene earlier for those at higher risk through annual screening, we believe we may be able to stop the disease cutting so many women’s lives so heartbreakingly short.”