Breast cancer screening offers few benefits to women over 70, finds study [research news]. BMJ 2014; 348:g2333.
Wise, J.
http://www.bmj.com/highwire/filestream/691661/field_highwire_article_pdf/0/bmj.g2333
Extending the Netherlands’ breast cancer screening programme to include women over the age of 70 did not lead to a fall in the number of advanced stage breast cancers detected, even though the number of early stage tumours detected rose, an evaluation has found. The study’s leader, Gerrit-Jan Liefers, a surgical oncologist and head of the geriatric oncology research group at Leiden University Medical Centre, said that if the programme were effective he would expect the incidence of advanced stage cancer to decrease, because any cancer would have been detected at an earlier stage. The study’s finding “implies that the effect of
screening in elderly women is limited and leads to a large proportion of overdiagnosis,” he said.
