Temple resident Trish Minot is a breast cancer survivor. Diagnosed in 2007 at the age of 56, she went in for a digital mammogram after finding something in a breast self-examination.

“If I hadn’t, I would have just been having regular mammograms and my doctor told me it could have been years before it showed up,” Minot said.

New recommendations by the U.S. Preventive Task Force to not teach breast self-examination and to delay beginning regular mammography for women until age 50 is causing a controversy among health-care providers and advocates.

It’s something Minot thinks is a terrible idea. She was following the guidelines, doing the self-exams and annual mammograms, and she’s sure it saved her life.

“I don’t think that the guidelines that were submitted by this group need to change anything women do at this time,” said Dr. Raul Zunzunegui, a board-certified and fellowship-trained breast surgical oncologist with the Comprehensive Breast Care Center of West Georgia. “The American Cancer Society, the American Society of Breast Surgeons, the American College of Radiology, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists all have come out with statements against their recommendations.”

The task force came out with new recommendations this month recommending against routine screening mammography in women 40 to 49, or after the age of 74 because the net benefit is small. The task force also recommended against teaching breast self-examination because it offers little benefit for the women.

Mammograms — an X-ray using a small dose of radiation to take a picture of the full breast — are the best screening tool available at this time. Mammograms are much less expensive than magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and more complete than sonograms, which can also be used for breast cancer detection.

Zunzunegui will not change his recommendations that women begin having annual mammograms beginning at age 40 and do breast self-examinations if they are comfortable doing them. A good percentage of his breast cancer patients are in their 40s, and in eliminating both those options as recommended procedures, women in that age group have no screening options.

“We know there’s data that mammography, particularly in the group of women between 40 and 50, (has) saved lives, (has) detected early disease and made a difference,” he said. “Is that difference 100,000 women? One million women? Maybe not. But it’s a difference.”

Zunzunegui is afraid that insurance companies will incorporate the new guidelines into their policies for paying for regular mammograms as screening tools or that women might think the mammograms aren’t necessary. However, there is no clear, cookie-cutter guideline for mammography because women are so diverse.

One woman over the age of 75 could be a very vital, active person who would benefit from breast cancer screening, while another dealing with many health problems may choose to forgo the screenings. The recommendations also don’t apply to women who are at high risk of developing breast cancer. It is a highly personal issue that should be decided by a woman and her physician, Zunzunegui said.

“A physician needs to decide the relative need for a mammogram depending on the patient’s overall being,” he said. “(The physician) is the patient’s advocate. Physician’s not working for the government. Physician’s not working for the insurance companies. The physician is working for the patient.”

Minot is now considered cancer free, in part because her cancer was detected so early. She participated in October’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer because she wanted to help raise awareness about the disease and early detection. In her opinion, this new recommendation is a giant step backwards.

“On the self-exam, that’s how I found mine,” Minot said. “There could be 300 women out there who do self-exams and now they say, ‘Now I see that I’m wasting my time.’ Then you could have 200 of those women that have a lump that won’t be found.”