Breast Cancer Isn’t an ‘Old-Age’ Disease

* In the front-page story “24% of O.C. Women Over 60 Don’t Get Mammograms” (Oct. 2), there was a quote attributed to Hoda Anton-Culver of UCI College of Medicine stating: “Only 30% of breast cancer is discovered in women under the age of 50. . . . It is an old-age disease.”

I submit to you that this quote is an incredible self-contradiction. That nearly a third of cases are detected first in women in their 30s and 40s (occasionally even in their 20s) makes this manifestly a disease that often strikes young women. The “old-age” notion may well mislead your women readers by encouraging them to wait until they are “old” to begin to perform self-examination, see their physicians for professional examination and to have mammograms as recommended by the American Cancer Society and other organizations.

It is not without reason that it is recommended that women begin self-examination at age 20 and have their first (base line) mammogram at 35.

I have spent the last 10 years of my medical practice specifically in the field of breast cancer diagnosis. I was motivated to narrow my interest to this field precisely because I saw so many cases of young women dying of breast cancer. Early diagnosis might well have saved some of these women.

FRANK B. ANDREWS, M.D.

San Juan Capistrano