in my practice i recommend that women start with a baseline mammogram at age 35. then they do their next mammogram at 40 and then we do them yearly after 40. we see a lot of breast cancer between 40 and 50 and we try to even increase the mammograms with breast sonograms so it enhances a pickup in breast cancer because as you look at the breast before 50 a lot of them are dense and you can’t really pick up a lot on the mammogram so the breast sonogram is a great adjutant to your mammogram. do you ask your doctor for that if they don’t give it to you? i have my patients go for mammograms and we fight to get them breast sonogram because the insurance companies are not great about paying for breast sonogram but having had picked up many breast cancers from the breast sonograms i encourage the patients to go for breast sonograms.
when should i start getting mammograms and how often?