Women’s views on breast cancer screening may have shifted due to guideline changes in breast cancer screening, according to research published March 12 in Patient Education and Counseling.
Exposure to guideline information updated in 2024 by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) led many women to adjust their breast cancer screening preferences to align more closely with the new recommendations, wrote a team led by Tamar Parmet, a doctoral candidate from the University of Colorado in Aurora, CO. And women in the study reported believing that being informed about screening benefits and harms remains important.
“These findings underscore the importance of transparency in public health messaging,” the Parmet team wrote.
The USPSTF in 2024 adjusted its breast cancer screening guidelines, which now recommend that all women undergo biennial screening from age 40 to 74, a B-grade recommendation. This replaced the task force’s prior recommendation that ages 40 to 49 engage in informed decision-making about when to begin screening. The new guidelines removed explicit informed decision-making language.
Parmet and colleagues recently studied how national news media covered the guideline changes and found that coverage did not often address overdiagnosis and informed decision-making in reference to the new guidelines.
The researchers studied how communicating the new guidelines may have influenced women’s screening preferences and views on what information women should receive before screening.
The study included 301 women aged 40 to 49 years who completed an online survey about their views on screening. This included viewing a decision aid informing them about breast cancer screening harms and benefits, as well as the prior USPSTF recommendation. Compared with before the decision aid, the participants preferred to undergo screening at their current age and biennially after that.
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Comparison of women’s views on breast cancer screening before, after exposure to decision aid |
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|
Measure |
Predecision aid |
Postdecision aid |
p-value |
|
Preference to be screened at current age |
81% |
86% |
< 0.001 |
|
Preference to be screening biennially after initial screening |
33% |
45% |
< 0.001 |
The researchers also used a rating system from 1 to 4, with a rating of 4 meaning “very important.” The participants said they believe it was important for women to be informed about the following: benefits of screening (3.77), women’s personal risk of breast cancer (3.75), overdiagnosis (3.48), and false positives (3.61).
The study authors suggested that clinicians and health systems may consider pairing “clear and directive information” about the new guidelines with brief information about screening benefits and harms and personal risk. This can help support guideline-concordant and informed screening decisions, they added.
“Despite the removal of explicit informed decision-making language from the 2024 guideline, women still believe it is important to be educated about both the harms and benefits of breast cancer screening,” Parmet and colleagues wrote.
Read the full study here.