Connecting the dots: Surprise and disagreement over mammography guidelines

Clinical practice guidelines for cancer screening offer a potentially valuable tool for improving health care outcomes by assisting patient and practitioner decisions. Paradoxically, recent mammography guidelines created discordance between the intended and actual receivers of this evidence-based information. The objective is to describe the guideline process and to examine public response to the mammography evidence.

A communication framework and newspaper data from Pew Research Center will be used to illustrate the media and the public's interest in the breast cancer screening guidelines, and provide potential explanations for discordant opinions from those of the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF); the issuing guideline body.

Even though USPSTF guideline messages are designed for practitioners, they offer an opportunity to engage individual patients in an informed discussion. Since the public has constant information access through various media channels, the current mammography guidance illustrate the importance of guideline bodies communicating evidence-based information to the public so that the information facilitates individual decision-making by patients and their providers.