France is the first country in the world where the number of breast cancers increases in proportion to its number of inhabitants. And this Tuesday is the start of Pink October. Screening, strongly recommended from the age of 50, remains very poorly known among French women.
“Pink October” begins this Tuesday with the annual breast cancer screening campaign. More and more women are having breast cancer in France, including among the youngest. 20% of women under 50 have breast cancer. So, at what age should you get tested? Is 50 too late? French women are not always very informed about breast cancer screening.
When we ask at what age we should start mammograms, these forty-year-olds are a little lost. “Between 47 and 50 years old, I would say”, indicates a first. “From the age of 45,” whispers another. “50 years is late, we should do it much earlier,” said another.
But faced with the increase in the number of cancers, some are starting screening earlier. Eléonore got started at the age of 40.
“I decided at one point, seeing a lot of cases around me, that monitoring needed to be fairly frequent, every two years,” she assures.
A mammogram before age 50
But be careful, some doctors fear that X-rays from exams increase the risk of cancer. For gynecologist Nasrine Callet, you must in any case have a first mammogram before the age of 50.
“My gynecologist colleagues request a reference mammogram at age 40. When a person has a first mammogram like this, we know what their breasts are like at age 40, if there were any calcifications or cysts. We know that she already had them and we don’t wake up at 50 and tell ourselves that she has an anomaly,” she explains.
The European Commission has proposed lowering the screening age to 45, or five years earlier. In any case, monitoring must be personalized with earlier detection if there are cases of cancer in the family.
Guillemette Franquet with Guillaume Descours
