Screening and Testing
Women with ATM, CHEK2, or PALB2 mutations may benefit from starting annual breast cancer screening with MRI between the ages and 30 to 35 and an annual MRI and mammogram starting at age 40.
Rates of screening mammograms among women who’ve received breast cancer treatment have declined since 2009, especially among women ages 40 to 49.
Only about 25% of women diagnosed with breast cancer and about 31% of women diagnosed with ovarian cancer have genetic testing.
Ultrasound doesn't add benefits beyond mammograms in diagnosing male breast cancer.
A very small study suggests women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer consider genomic test results very important when deciding whether to have chemotherapy, but many of them don't fully understand what the test results mean.
The genetic mutations that increase breast cancer risk, including mutations in the BRCA1, BRCA2, and PALB2 genes, are the same for both Black and white women, which means that currently available genetic tests are effective for Black women.
Measuring the Ki-67 protein in breast cancers doesn't help decide who would benefit from chemotherapy in women diagnosed with hormone-receptor-positive, node-negative disease.
An experimental test may be able to help predict the risk of hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer, but it's not clear how useful the test is.
New guidelines on protectively removing both ovaries and the fallopian tubes address the role this surgery can play in reducing the risk of both ovarian and breast cancer.
New studies suggest that even one circulating tumor cell in a blood sample from a woman diagnosed with breast cancer is linked to a worse prognosis.
Breast MRI before breast cancer surgery doesn't lower the risk of the cancer coming back, either in the breast area or in a part of the body away from the breast.
The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has put out new guidelines on HER2 testing for breast cancer.
The prospective PlanB study has found that women with a Recurrence Score of 11 or lower who skipped chemotherapy based on the Recurrence Score had excellent 5-year survival rates.
Considering information about the clinical risk of recurrence of early-stage breast cancer along with the Oncotype DX Recurrence Score results can help refine which women age 50 and younger diagnosed with early-stage hormone-receptor-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer that has not spread to the lymph nodes with a Recurrence Score of 16 to 25 will benefit from chemotherapy.
ASCO updates guidelines on using biomarkers to make decisions about systemic therapies after surgery to treat people diagnosed with early-stage invasive breast cancer to include recent results from the TAILORx trial on using the Oncotype DX test to guide use of chemotherapy after surgery.
Women diagnosed with breast cancer who had regular mammograms had a 60% lower risk of dying from the disease in the 10 years after diagnosis and a 47% lower risk of dying from the disease in the 20 years after diagnosis compared to women who didn't have regular screening.
A study suggests that the Oncotype DX test can offer relevant information about cancer progression and 2-year survival rates for women diagnosed with de novo stage IV cancer.
A study suggests that strongly estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancers with a low FISH test ratio are less likely to respond to Herceptin.
Cancer screening for most women with dense breasts should include ultrasound and mammogram, according to new guidelines.
Screening plans that add ultrasound and MRI to annual mammograms improves breast cancer detection in women with dense breasts.
A group of Canadian scientists has developed a new way to test for abnormal BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes that seems to be more accurate and less expensive than the current testing methods.
Breast MRI can play an important role in guiding surgery and treatment for breast cancer, independent of breast density.
More aggressive breast cancer screening may not make sense after a benign abnormal area is biopsied; following standard breast cancer screening guidelines for women with average breast cancer risk is appropriate.
The debate about the benefits of screening mammograms for women younger than 50 goes back at least as far as 1969.