An important message on breast health from Dr. Kelly Shanahan

Dear Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Wives, Friends:

I just flew back from Richmond, Virginia, and my mother's home. It was not a pleasure trip. I went to be with my mother as she had surgery for breast cancer. She had a lumpectomy and lymph node biopsy. She will have to have radiation therapy. She is lucky, however: Her lymph nodes were free of cancer, so she will not need chemotherapy.

My mother is stubborn and will get through this. But she would not have had to have a 4cm chunk of her breast removed if she had gone for a mammogram every year. She thought she didn't need to have a mammogram -- "No one in the family has ever had breast cancer," she said. In fact, 90 percent of women with breast cancer are the first in their families to be diagnosed with the disease. Or, "I don't need a mammogram every year -- I'm XX years old." The incidence of breast cancer increases with age, and every woman over age 50 should get a mammogram every year.

If my mother had had a mammogram every year, it would not have prevented her from getting breast cancer. But it would have been detected earlier, when chance of spread is lower and cure rates are higher. My mother was lucky that the cancer had not already spread. The next women who hasn't had a mammogram in 6 years and who has a 3 cm lump in her breast may not be so lucky.

The current recommendations are for women between the ages of 40 and 50 to get a mammogram every one to two years, and for all women over 50 to have a mammogram annually. Please -- for the sake of your children, your families, your friends, yourself -- get a mammogram.