Women who skip mammo face higher risk of death

Older adult women who do not undergo regular screening mammography are more likely to die of breast cancer than women who are scanned, according to a long-term study of breast imaging in Massachusetts.

Dr. Blake Cady, professor emeritus of surgery at Harvard, and colleagues reviewed the cases of 6997 women who were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer between 1990 and 1999. All women also underwent follow-up through 2007. Cady confirmed 461 deaths, 116 for regularly screened women and 345 among women who were not regularly screened. Nearly two-thirds (60.9%) of deaths involved women who had never undergone screening while 5% occurred for those with at least one previous mammogram, but not within two years of diagnosis. The study was presented at the 2009 Breast Cancer Symposium in San Francisco.