After reviewing mammography use in women over the age of 55 who have been treated for breast cancer, University of Massachusetts Medical School researchers report that only one in three breast cancer survivors have annual mammography screenings. In the first year after treatment, 80 percent of women went in for a mammogram. At the fifth year of follow-up, only 63 percent had received an annual mammogram, and after the fifth year, only one in three had an annual mammogram. An interesting fact from the report was that older women, with other medical conditions, and those who had been diagnosed with late-stage tumors, were significantly less likely to have a mammogram.
The researchers suggest that efforts are needed to increase awareness among physicians and breast cancer survivors on the value of follow-up mammography in diagnosing a reoccurrence of breast cancer in its earliest stage for the most successful treatment. The summary of the report in the press release does not indicate why two-thirds of breast cancer survivors are not going in for follow-up mammograms, and if this means that breast cancer survivors have dropped all follow-up care.

Five years is a benchmark of sorts when it comes to breast cancer survivorship, and it could be breast cancer survivors feel that after reaching the five year milestone they can relax a bit. There is a saying that if you make it five years as a cancer survivor, you are likely to die from something besides cancer. I cannot tell you if the saying is true, but it is a fairly common belief. Or perhaps they are simply experiencing a psychological exhaustion from the intensive amount of testing that goes on for the first five years after diagnosis. Or perhaps, after going through cancer treatment once, they have decided they will not go through it again -- especially if we are talking reoccurrence -- because that means all they went through in treatment the first time did not work.

I am not justifying why these women are not having an annual mammogram, I am merely wondering aloud the reasons for this trend. I think merely stressing the importance and value of having an annual mammogram is not going to have the desired results of getting more breast cancer survivors to come in for mammograms, if they have not discovered the reasons why breast cancer survivors are not having mammograms done.