The new age for routine mammograms has changed from 40 to 50 sparking some controversy between the American Cancer Society and the United States Preventive Service Task Force (USPSTF).

The new recommendation has come from the USPSTF, whose mission is to find out if risks in mammograms outweigh the benefits in women of various ages.The recommendation st ates, “women in their 40s should not routinely have mammograms and that women between ages 50 and 74 should have mammograms every two years instead of annually.”

In a new analysis it is shown that women who have mammograms twice-yearly instead of annually would receive 80 percent of the benefits while reducing the risks in half.“Screening turns up lots of tiny abnormalities that are either not cancer or are slow-growing cancers that would never progress to the point of killing a woman and might not even become known to her.” says the New York Times.

According to the nytimes.com, the risks for woman whose cancers grow too slowly to kill them are not worth taking. Applying that scientific analysis is extremely difficult and so the only solution will be when researchers find a way to distinguish the dangerous cancers from the less-dangerous ones.

The task force estimates that over 1,900 have to get screened to save one life for women in their 40s, 1,300 for women in their 50s, and only 377 among women in their 60s.In conclusion the panel has decided that mammograms are beneficial to woman over the age of 50 but the risks outweigh the benefits in women in younger age groups.