Opinion: Starting breast cancer screening at 40 saved my life
The decision to lower the recommended age for breast cancer screening back to 40 is important for women's health and for equity.
In 2015, the year I turned 40, the American Cancer Society updated its guidelines for breast cancer screenings. Instead of urging women to get mammograms beginning at 40, it would now recommend yearly mammograms beginning at age 45, and then every two years from age 55 on.
I was greatly relieved by this news. I was a little more than a year into a wildly busy job at a news media startup. I had already taken time off in that period for regular check-ups with my primary care physician, my gynecologist, my dentist, my eye doctor — plus time away to bring my young daughter to her appointments with the pediatrician, the dentist, and the ENT who saw her multiple times that year before deciding to take out her adenoids.
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