ACR, SBI publish new breast cancer screening guidelines

The American College of Radiology (ACR) and Society of Breast Imaging (SBI) have published new breast cancer screening guidelines, once again recommending that all women begin annual screening at age 40.

These guidelines recommend that all women have a “risk assessment” at age 30 to see if they should begin screening at an earlier age and call for women with a previous breast cancer diagnosis to receive breast MRI screening.

“The latest scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports a continued general recommendation of starting annual screening at age 40,” Debra Monticciolo, MD, chair of the ACR Breast Imaging Commission, said in a prepared statement. “It also supports augmented and earlier screening for many women. These updates will help save more lives.”

The guidelines are also the first to classify black women as high-risk patients due to their increased likelihood to die from breast cancer compared to non-Hispanic white women and their increased risk of having aggressive “triple-negative” breast tumors.

“Since 1990, breast cancer death rates dropped 23 percent in African-American women—approximately half that in whites,” Wendy B. DeMartini, MD, said in the statement. “We changed our approach to help save more African-American women and others at higher risk from this deadly disease.”

The full recommendations can be read on the Journal of the American College of Radiology website.