A study looking at how frequently women who had survived childhood cancer were having breast cancer screening was published in the January 28 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Women who had five mammograms between the ages of 24 and 29 had an additional 26 breast cancers per 10,000 women due to the radiation, research by the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore suggests. Until now starting screenings young had been seen as vital for women who have the potentially deadly BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene.

The study included 625 women, aged 25 through 50, who had been treated with chest RT for a pediatric cancer, and were participants in the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS), a multi-institutional cohort comprised of long-term survivors diagnosed with a pediatric malignancy from 1970-1986. To better evaluate this population's breast cancer screening practices, the authors compared their breast cancer screening practices to that of two other similarly aged groups - the first group was comprised of female cancer survivors not treated with chest RT, and the second were siblings of cancer survivors from the full CCSS cohort.

"Most young women at risk of breast cancer following chest radiation for a pediatric cancer are not being appropriately screened, highlighting the fact that many women and their physicians are unaware of this risk of breast cancer at a young age," said Dr. Oeffinger. According to the assessment, the strongest predictor of mammography in women ages 25 through 39 is having a physician recommendation.