I have been invited for breast screening. Should I be worried?
No, but perhaps you’d like some more information about the benefits and risks. The official advice from the Department of Health is that screening saves lives through early detection of abnormal changes that are too small to be felt. Of the 2.2 million women invited for screening by the NHS in 2007-08, 1.7 million were checked, up half a million on a decade ago. The number of cancer cases detected by screening has more than doubled over the same period to 14,100 in 2007-08. But a group of Danish researchers, and some experts in Britain, say that the information given to women is too one-sided, and does not provide the full facts.
What am I not being told?
Last February, the British Medical Journal published a review by Peter G?tzsche and colleagues, Breast Screening: The Facts — or Maybe Not. This criticised the official publicity materials for NHS breast screening for not providing data on the chance of false positive or negative results. Researchers say that if 2,000 women are screened regularly for ten years, one will avoid dying from breast cancer — but ten healthy women will be treated unnecessarily, having surgery and/or receiving radiotherapy or chemotherapy.
What is being done?
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The NHS Cancer Screening Programme has defended its policies but a new edition of Breast Screening — the Facts is due out this year. Advances in digital mammography techniques may also lead to more accurate scans.