Breast Cancer Survivors Often Not Getting Needed Mammograms

Researchers followed the status of more than 27,000 women after their breast cancer surgery and found that 13% failed to have a mammogram within one year of their procedure. At the five-year mark, the percentage of women who had not had a mammogram in the last year rose to 19% and only 50% had undergone annual mammograms in the preceding half-decade. Lead researcher Dr. Kathryn Ruddy writes, “The use of regular mammograms to detect a return of breast cancer before any symptoms appear is associated with better overall survival… Therefore, clinicians need to make sure that their patients are fully aware of the role these annual mammograms play in screening for new breast cancers as well as for local recurrences.”  Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, May 2018