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The controversy surrounding the United States Preventive Services Task Force and its recommendation regarding women and screening mammography continues. Two recent studies highlighted today in the clip above encourage women to take a closer look, and confirm that screening for breast cancer with mammography should still begin at age 40. Meredith Viera of the Today Show suggests that the recommendations from the USPSTF ought to be reconsidered. Dr. Freya Schnabel, Director of Breast Surgery for NYU Langone Medical Center, concurs with Meredith, and shares her expertise and evaluation of the recent studies from Sweden and the UK. Here is the transcript from the Today Show's Web site at  http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/40449870#40449870

Meredith Viera: This morning on "Today's" health women and mammograms. This report seems to fly in the face of last year's report that women don't need mammograms until the age of 50. Last year, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended changing guidelines for breast cancer screening. It recommended that women begin getting mammograms at the age of 50 instead of 40 and then only once every two years. That caused a lot of confusion and a lot of controversy last year. Now you have this new study out of England which finds that women over age 50 had a significantly reduced risk of mastectomy. Why is that significant?

Dr. Freya Schnabel: This is significant because this current study from the UK helped us identify another benefit for breast cancer screening. The Task Force was very focussed on an analysis of whether or not mammograms helped save lives. This study says we can find another benefit to early detection, so not just survival is an issue, but the ability to have more favorable and acceptable treatment methods and avoid mastectomy if the cancer is detected early.

Meredith Viera: This comes on the heels of another study out of Sweden that came out that said that breast cancer screenings between the age of 40 and 50 reduces the number of breast cancer deaths. Do you envision the task force possibly changing its recommendation?

Dr. Freya Schabel: I think good guidelines should be revisited from time to time in the light of new data that that emerges and a task force like this that bases their recommendations on modeling of outcomes, not on real data from real people should probably be revised at some point in the near future based on this new information.

Meredith Viera: The national institutes of cancer have not followed it at all, they continue to recommend that women get their first screening at the age of 40.

Dr. Freya Schnabel: That's correct, most of the major groups in America, including the American Cancer Society, have stood by the original guidelines and I think that our general message to women is to maximize the benefit from screening and early detection, we recommend annual mammography after 40.

Meredith Viera: Dr. Schnabel, thank you very much. I hope that clarifies things.