False Information About Breast Cancer Screening

To the Editor Together, the recent Research Letter by Radhakrishnan and colleagues¹ and the accompanying Editorial by Grady and Redberg,² both published in a recent issue of JAMA Internal Medicine, provide strong evidence that primary care physicians recognize the value of screening mammography to improve the lives of their patients. The survey by Radhakrishnan and colleagues¹ reports that most primary care physicians reject the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) contentious recommendations on screening. Rather, by recommending annual screening for their patients beginning at age 40 years, physicians surveyed in the fields of internal medicine, family medicine, and obstetrics and gynecology demonstrate that their understanding that all major medical organizations that comment on screening—the American Cancer Society (ACS), the American College of Radiology, the Society of Breast Imaging, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and even the USPSTF itself—all agree that mortality is minimized by beginning annual screening at age 40 years, even though the USPSTF recommends screening begin at 50 years.