Expert panel that sparked mammogram controversy now says tests should start at 40

A draft recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force says breast cancer screening should start at age 40 to benefit groups including Black women and women with dense breasts. An influential panel intends to recommend that U.S. women begin mammograms to screen for breast cancer at 40 and continue getting them once every two years until age 75. “New and more inclusive science about breast cancer in people younger than 50 has enabled us to expand our prior recommendation and encourage all women to get screened every other year starting at age 40,” said Dr. Carol Mangione, chief of internal medicine at UCLA and the chair of the group that wrote the task force’s proposed recommendation. Dr. Debra L. Monticciolo, a radiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, was highly critical of the task force’s decision to recommend mammograms every other year considering that Black women and Jewish women die from breast cancer prior to age 50 — or even 40 — more often than white women as a whole.