"When women in their s get breast cancer https their tumors need less intense treatment and recur less often if they were first detected during routine mammogram https screening. The finding comes from a careful study of nearly  women diagnosed with firsttime breast cancer https at age  to . The women were carefully followed since their diagnosis in  to  says study coleader Judith A. Malmgren PhD president of Seattles HealthStat Consulting. What we are seeing is that women with mammogram https breast cancer https require less treatment Malmgren tells WebMD. They get more breast https surgery and less chemotherapy https For women in their s and s the benefits of getting regular mammograms clearly outweigh the risks. But the picture isnt so clear for women in their s. The U.S. Preventive Services https Task Force USPSTF says there is no proof that the benefits of routine mammogram screening outweigh the risks for averagerisk women in their s. The American Cancer https Society ACS still recommends that women start screening in their s  but only if they are fully aware of the possible harms as well as the possible benefits. Even the USPSTF accepts the fact that beginning breast cancer screening at age  saves lives. It cuts the death rate in these women by about  says Otis Brawley MD chief medical officer for the ACS. Lets say  women in the world were going to die of breast https cancer https that developed in their s Brawley tells WebMD. If all those women were screened in their s only  would die. But the vast majority of women will never develop breast cancer https during their s. These women will suffer the harms of early screening. The issue is how many women are going to have to be called back because of abnormal mammogram findings Brawley says. How many women are going to end up getting biopsies https and then learn they dont have breast cancer And a certain proportion of women are going to be so inconvenienced so many times with the mammograms they got in their s that they will walk away from it in their s and s when it is a much better test. Malmgren agrees that women need to be informed of the harms of breast cancer screening. But she notes that theres much more on the benefit side than simply not dying of breast cancer. Breast cancer treatment https has improved. Even if you are treated at a later stage you are likely to survive she says. But do you want that double mastectomy https and heavy chemotherapy Nobody wants that. Malmgren found that over time more and more of the something women she studied had their breast cancers detected via mammograms. And as the rate of mammogramdetected breast cancer went up the rate of laterstage cancer went down and the rate of veryearlystage disease went up. Moreover there was a lower risk of breast cancer coming back after treatment. If you have mammographydetected breast cancer in your s it is less likely to need radical surgery or chemotherapy Malmgren says. All the USPSTF looks at is mortality. But should we not also consider as benefits the reduced need for treatment and less relapse The study by Malmgren and her colleagues appears in the March issue of the journal Radiology."