Today on the Today Show®

Oh, my gosh!   I was appalled this morning when Dr. Nancy Snyderman was answering questions about breast cancer, particularly the one from Megan from OK City, who said:  "Can women in the early to mid twenties be diagnosed with Breast Cancer?"   Dr. Snyderman started quoting the statistics about risk among age groups in the general population and said in the early to mid-twenties, a breast cancer diagnosis can be but very rare… about 1 in over 2,000.    She says that age remains #1 risk factor for getting breast cancer.

Her exact response was: 

“No reason to rush into screening unless for some crazy reason you have a strong family history of breast cancer.   But if you don’t….. no, no reason to worry yet.”

Ann Curry tried to point out that most breast cancers have no genetic/family history and Dr. Nancy’s response was …..“No way should a 28 year woman, who’s otherwise healthy, with no risk factors, start to think about mammography.   That’s for later in life."

I am terrified that younger women will take this as a reason to be less vigilant about breast cancer, or if she finds something, will explain it away as "oh, I'm sure it's nothing.   My risk of breast cancer is too small to worry about it."  

As a breast cancer survivor who was diagnosed at an early age, with NO family history and as someone who was "otherwise healthy" - I would not be here today if I had taken her advice!   And unfortunately, when a younger woman has breast cancer, it is usually much more aggressive!!

Please, please make sure that a focus is placed on YOUNG women and breast cancer.  

BREAST CANCER does NOT CARE how OLD you are, what color skin you have, what socio-economic status you have, what education you have achieved or where you live!!!  

Women need to start at an early age being vigilant about the 3 steps to early detection:

1.   MONTHLY breast self-exams - probably the #1 thing to be doing at an early age!   Become familiar with your own body so you will know if something different does come up.   Then GO TO THE DOCTOR and get it checked out.  It doesn't matter if it might only by fibrocystic in nature.  Insist that it be checked out!!

2.   Mammography - not the best for detection in  younger women - because of the density of breast tissue.   But cannot be discounted! 

3.   Annual clinical exam by physician - But remember that he/she only sees you once a year.  

Thanks for "listening."

I completely agree with Rhondainjax!

I never worried about breast cancer as a young woman in my 20's and 30's because I was not at a high risk.  After being diagnosed with breast cancer at 42, I was grateful that I had been diligent about my regular visits to the gyn and that my gyn had already had me do a baseline mammogram years before.

I, too, worry that women and their insurance companies will not complete and pay for what rhondainjax says the three early detection steps are!

p.s. I also personally know of two other women who were diagnosed at 20 and 33 years old, and unfortunately the younger of the two did not win her battle.