Screening for breast cancer.
Strong evidence supports the value of breast cancer screening with mammography, and high-quality mammography screening can be considered a major public health achievement. As noted earlier in the discussion about the evaluation of service screening, the group of women who did not participate in mammographic screening in the decades after screening had been introduced had essentially unchanged or only minor improvements in mortality compared with the pattern before the introduction of screening, despite widespread use of adjuvant chemotherapy or hormonal therapy. Breast cancer should be treated in its preclinical phase if we are to save the lives of women with this disease, and a considerable body of evidence outlines best practices that, with broader adherence, would result in greater breast cancer mortality reductions than have been observed to date.
Duffy
Stephen W
SW
Cancer Research UK, Department of Epidemiology, Mathematics and Statistics, Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, Queen Mary University of London, London EC1M 6BQ, UK.
Smith
Robert A
RA
Gabe
Rhian
R
Tabár
László
L
Yen
Amy M F
AM
Chen
Tony H H
TH
D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D002278:Carcinoma in Situ / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000517:prevention & control; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008327:Mammography; D008403:Mass Screening; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D011379:Prognosis; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity