Back to December 2009: Updates from the 2009 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium
Any discussion of proposed mammography guidelines?
- Question from Jewel: The new guidelines about mammograms came out around the conference — was there much discussion there among the experts? What was the general view?
- Answer —Kathy Miller, M.D. : I think many people would be surprised that there was less discussion about the guidelines than you might expect. Much of the focus is on treatment of women with both earlier stage cancer and metastatic disease, and understanding the biology of breast cancer or why some women develop breast cancer in the first place. Understanding that could lead to better options for prevention. Screening is certainly important, and there were studies focused on screening, but for women with very high risk of developing breast cancer, so the guidelines really don’t apply to that group of women.