Mammo's missing: Underserved & Overlooked

摘要

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends women 50 to 74 years old undergo screening mammography every two years. Other guidelines promote annual studies and push age limits to include younger and older women as well. Yet amid the din of debates about overuse, some women still remain underserved. "We are happy if a woman comes in even every other year," says Bridget A. Oppong, MD, a breast surgeon and assistant medical director at the Capital Breast Cancer Center (CBCC) in Washington, D.C., a screening facility that serves minority and underserved women in the district, Virginia and Maryland that stresses annual screening as the standard of care. "Our problem is we have women who come in once and they feel, 'I have a clean bill of health; I am done with that.'"