Franke Majewski's mother was just 28 the first time she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

A mammogram confirmed what she'd feared after finding a lump during a self-check. Five years later, a routine mammogram revealed that the cancer had returned. Ms. Majewski was just a teenager then, and her mom was given just two months to live.

Given her family history, Ms. Majewski had her first mammogram at 25 - long before 40, the age traditionally recommended for beginning regular mammograms, and even longer before 50, a revised recommendation made last week by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

The task force said that because mammograms often lead to false positives and unnecessary biopsies, women in their 40s should discuss the benefits and risks of mammograms with their doctors before deciding to have one. It recommends routine mammograms for women between the ages of 50 and 74, but doesn't offer any guidelines for women 75 and older, saying that the risks and benefits for women in this age group are unknown.

The task force is made up of 16 health experts who review medical data and make recommendations based upon it.

Perhaps not surprisingly, these recommendations have drawn some negative feedback, both from people who treat breast cancer and people who have been impacted by it.

"Personally, I feel that mammograms save lives," said Ms. Majewski, who lives in St. Joseph. "I realize there are downsides such as false positives and the exposure to a small amount of radiation, but I would rather go through an uncomfortable biopsy once every two to five years than the chemo, hospitalizations and suffering my mother went through for five years. And she still lost her life to breast cancer."

Women across the country have had similar reactions, and they're ones that should be expected, said Dr. Edward Andres, medical director of Heartland Regional Medical Center's breast center and a Heartland Surgical Associates surgeon.

"The women in this country should be up in arms over this," he added. "I think (the task force) is a bunch of old, statistician geezers who are trying to save money. ... But statistical analysis shouldn't have a bearing on any particular patient."

He also noted that - although mammograms do sometimes fail to detect cancer and often pick up on things that aren't cancer - 20 percent of the time, abnormal mammograms do in fact detect cancer or precancerous cells, often before the condition has progressed enough to become palpable. Waiting until age 50 for a mammogram, conversely, increases a woman's risk of not detecting cancer until it's advanced.

The American Society of Breast Surgeons, which Dr. Andres belongs to, also stands by the traditional recommendation that women begin having mammograms in their 40s. And as for capping the recommended age range for undergoing mammograms at 74, Dr. Andres pointed out that a healthy 75-year-old woman could have 20 years left to live and is very much in need of screening for a cancer that could cut this time short.

"An upper age limit is just absolutely ridiculous," he added. "And in the long run, it won't save money. ... Mammograms are pretty cheap, but you can blow a quarter of a million dollars caring for a breast cancer patient" whose cancer isn't caught early.

Questions have been raised over how the task force's recommendations will affect insurance coverage of mammograms, especially in light of government health care reform. Though the task force is independent, the Department of Health and Human Services' Web site calls the panel's recommendations the "gold standard," and insurance companies look to the panel for guidance on which preventive care practices they should cover. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius released a statement last week, however, saying that her department's policies remain unchanged and that she "would be very surprised if any private insurance company changed its mammography coverage decisions as a result of this action."

Dr. Andres said he doesn't plan to make any changes in his mammography recommendations, either, noting that when breast cancer is caught early, women have at least a 90 percent to 95 percent chance of being cured and not seeing the cancer return.

He said, too, that having a wife who is a breast cancer survivor - diagnosed at age 50 - he wants his daughters to begin regular screenings in their 40s.

"I've seen it in a 23-year-old. I've seen it in a 27-year-old," he added. "It's not common (before age 50) ... but it's certainly worth doing a lot of tests in a young woman who's going to have 30, 40, 50 years of life left."

Erin Wisdom can be reached

at ewisdom@npgco.com.