Think Pinker

A recent Reuters report indicates that female children who underwent chest radiation to treat childhood cancer have a higher risk of developing breast cancer as an adult yet they are not getting the necessary screening.

While the study only included women from Canada and the United State who has Hodgkin’s disease as children there was a definite pattern established leading one to believe that perhaps this study needs to be reintroduced including other countries like Great Britain and Australia.

What was discovered in these two countries is that the children were treated with high doses of radiation to the chest, which has a known history of increasing the risk of breast cancer. Yet even though it was recommended that these women receive a mammogram starting at age 25 less than 50% actually did. By the age of 45 the number of women getting a mammogram had gone up.

All of us are well aware of the importance of having a mammogram after the age of 40 but for those women who had childhood cancers it seems the message isn’t getting through loud and clear that those mammograms need to start by age 25.

Since these women are at a significantly higher risk of developing breast cancer you would think that would mean the medical system would do whatever it takes to ensure that they get tested so that should they develop breast cancer it would be diagnosed at an early stage.

No one wants to think about the treatment as a child being the cause of cancer in adulthood but it is and so whatever it takes we need to protect these women and make sure that they are not left at a higher risk than other women.