Mammogram Reminders Can Be a Lifesaving for Women

Mammogram reminders do boost the number of women who get their routine mammograms on schedule

According to a new study, mammogram reminders, when given in a step-wise fashion that starts with mailings and ends if necessary with personal phone calls, do boost the number of women who get their routine mammograms on schedule.

The reminder program could save lives, says the study's lead author Adrianne Feldstein, MD, an investigator and medical liaison for research at Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore.

''If this was widely used we believe we would be able to detect 25,000 additional early breast cancers in the U.S.," Feldstein says of the reminder system she tested. She bases that estimate on computations such as the number of mammograms per year that lead to a new diagnosis of breast cancer.

Mammography rates have been declining in recent years, according to recent research, with 66% of U.S. women getting routine mammograms in 2005 compared to 70% in 2000.

"When it was four months before it was due, we started to remind them," Feldstein says. The goal, she says, was to encourage women to have a mammogram at least every 24 months (although some organizations urge annual mammograms).

In the other two groups were women aged 42 to 49, for whom mammograms are also recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, one of many organizations setting guidelines, and women aged 70 and above, for whom mammograms are conditionally recommended by the task force.