A high proportion of women seem to undergo mammography screening every year, despite recommendations for biennial screening, according to a research letter published online March 25 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Meehir N. Dixit, from the Brown University School of Public Health in Boston, and colleagues examined how often U.S. women aged 40 to 84 years reported mammography screening in the past year versus the past one to two years using data from the 2019 and 2021 National Health Interview Survey. The final sample included 20,034 women without a history of breast cancer.

The researchers found that 68.1% of the participants reported mammography screening in the past two years, 75.2% of whom reported screening in the past year. Among women reporting screening in the past two years, those aged 40 to 44 and 55 to 74 years were more likely than those aged 45 to 54 or 75 to 84 years to report screening in the past year.

Screening in the past year was also more likely to be reported by non-Hispanic Black women and those with a college degree, with private insurance, from the Northeast or Midwest, who were married, with higher income, who reported a wellness visit or physical in the past year, or who were surveyed in 2019. Overall, 71.1% of women aged 65 to 84 years with a life expectancy of less than 10 years who were screened in the past two years reported screening in the past year.

“Multilevel interventions to inform women aged 40 years or older of the option to screen biennially may be appropriate for health system or programs choosing to follow guidelines recommending biennial screening,” the authors write.

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