Why Black women should consider screening for breast cancer earlier

Age recommendations for when women should start yearly mammograms to screen for breast cancer vary. However, Mayo Clinic healthcare professionals have been firm for more than a decade that women should start breast cancer screening at age 40.

Starting mammograms early is especially important for non-Hispanic Black women, who have higher rates of breast cancer compared to non-Hispanic white women.

Watch this "Mayo Clinic Minute" video to hear  Sandhya Pruthi, M.D., with Mayo Clinic's Breast Diagnostic Clinic and Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center, explain why Black women should start screening for breast cancer earlier:

"For years now we've known Black women tend to die of breast cancer 40% more often than white women. They also tend to have more aggressive cancers, known as triple-negative breast cancers," says Dr. Pruthi.

She says starting screening early may help reduce these disparities.

"For Black women, we need to start screening and we should be screening them much younger — beginning age 40 and sometimes even younger, in their 30s," says Dr. Sandhya Pruthi.

Detecting breast cancer early can improve prognosis and reduce deaths. Dr. Pruthi stresses the importance of understanding your individual risk factors, which can start with a conversation.

"I want people to come back to their primary care doctors and say, 'Can you tell me what are my risk factors? Can you do a risk assessment and guide me on what is the best approach that's individualized to my needs based on my risk factors?' And that may mean screening someone younger with different screening recommendations," says Dr. Pruthi.

Those different screening recommendations may include MRI in addition to mammography, whole breast ultrasound or molecular breast imaging.

Learn more

Learn more about breast cancer and how to reduce your risk of developing the disease.

Also, read these articles:

• "Dear Mayo Clinic: Breast density reporting and supplemental testing"
• "Dear Mayo Clinic: Who needs molecular breast imaging?"
• "Determining if you have dense breasts"
• "What Black women need to know about breast cancer"

A version of this article was originally published on the Mayo Clinic News Network.