Results of a new study suggest that girls who received chest radiation for childhood cancer should obtain mammograms starting as early as age 25 because they are more likely to develop breast cancer than other women. The study, published in the journal Cancer, found that women treated for cancer during childhood are 20 times more likely to develop breast cancer than women who did not receive chest radiation during childhood.
Researchers traced the medical records of 3,463 girls treated for cancer at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee between 1962 and 1995. They found that 12 of the girls developed breast cancer, four of them before the age of 25.
