Study: Mammograms Still Beneficial To Beat Cancer For Older Women

DETROIT (WWJ) - A new study suggests that mammograms for older women may still be beneficial for survival.

Dr. Michael Simon, Professor of Oncology at the Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit says there's been an ongoing debate over when women should begin having annual mammograms.

This study looked at the interval between mammograms and breast cancer death. More than 9,000 breast cancer patients were studied.

"We looked at women that had a mammogram -- and this is the mammogram interval before their diagnosis -- so, was their last interval less than a year?

Was it one-to-two years; two-to-five years or more than five years? And, we found that for women that had a longer interval; women over all -- these are women aged 50 and older -- and women with a longer interval were more likely to die from breast cancer," said Dr. Simon.

The findings, which also held for women over aged 75, are being presented Sunday in Washington, DC at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.