NHS Breast Screening Programme: at a glance facts and figures

Effectiveness

In 2001/2002 the NHS Breast Screening Programme:
- Screened just under 1.1 million women aged between 50 to 64.¹
- Detected 7,090 cases of cancer. Of those, 2,922 were cancers smaller than 15mm which is usually impossible to feel with the human hand¹
93.1 per cent of women who have had breast cancer detected by screening are alive five years later (cancers diagnosed in 1994/1995).³
The latest survival figures for England show that an average of 76 per cent of women diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993-1995 were alive five years later.²
- Women with tumours less than 2cm have a 5 year survival rate of greater than 95 per cent.³
- Women with tumours greater than 2cm have a 5 year survival of more than 60 per cent.³

The World Health Organisation's (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded that mammography screening for breast cancer reduces mortality. The IARC working group, comprising 24 experts from 11 countries, evaluated all the available evidence on breast screening and determined that there is a 35 per cent reduction in mortality from breast cancer among screened women aged 50-69 years old.⁴

Screening women under 50

At present, women under 50 are not offered routine screening. Mammograms seem not to be as effective in pre-menopausal women possibly because the density of the breast tissue makes it more difficult to detect problems and also because the incidence of breast cancer is lower in this age group.
However, the NHS Breast Screening Programme is currently conducting a trial to see what benefit, if any, is gained by routinely screening women under 50. 65,000 women aged 40 and 41 are being invited for annual screening for seven years after which they are automatically invited every three years as part of the NHS Breast Screening Programme. A control group of 130,000 women, who will not be invited for screening but will receive usual NHS care, will be monitored for breast cancer over this period. The trial was started in 1991 and is funded through the UKCCCR. It will run for 15 years. Interim results for the study should be available in 2005.

Frequency of screening

The Frequency Trial concluded that the NHS Breast Screening Programme has got the interval between screening and invitations about right at three years, compared with more frequent screening.⁵

¹Department of Health Statistical Bulletin, Breast Screening Programme, England: 2001-2002
²Department of Health High Level Performance Indicators, January 2002
³An audit of screen detected breast cancer for the year of screening April 1999-March 2000, NHSBSP and BASO, May 2001 (UK)
⁴7th Handbook on Cancer Prevention, IARC, Lyons 2002
⁵The frequency of breast screening: results from the UKCCCR Randomised Trial, European Journal of Cancer, 2002; 1458-1464

For further information please contact Michelle Powell, Charlotte Grant, Kelly Broad or Kate Cutler at the press office: 020 7282 2922.

Breast screening programme

What happens at a
breast screening Unit?

What are the risks of breast screening?

Breast awareness

Benign breast disease

[ Home \| Breast Screening \| Cervical Screening \| Colorectal Screening \| Prostate Cancer Risk Management \| Screening News \| Contact NHS Screening ]
The national office can be contacted at: NHS Cancer Screening Programmes The Manor House 260 Ecclesall Road South SHEFFIELD S11 9PS Tel: 0114 271 1060 Fax: 0114 271 1089 E-mail: [email protected]	Press and media enquiries should be made to: NHS Cancer Screening Press Office 3 London Wall Buildings London Wall LONDON EC2M 5SY Tel: 020 7282 2922 Fax: 020 7282 1064 E-mail: [email protected]

http://www.cancerscreening.nhs.uk/breastscreen/nhsbsp-facts-figures.html site created by The Net Effect using Validated HTML