BMJ 1995;310:1002-1003 (15 April)

Letters

Maximise compliance as well as radiological sensitivity

EDITOR,--Ciaran B J Woodman and colleagues' paper reporting the high rate of interval cancers in the North Western Regional Health Authority1 and the accompanying editorial2 will help to increase awareness that successful breast screening has several facets. Two view mammography at the first screen is a simple and effective way of improving the yield at prevalence screens, thus reducing the potential for "false negative" interval cancers. One of the principles behind mammographic breast screening is that the earlier in the detectable preclinical phase that this (or any) modality can achieve detection the longer the delay before the rate of interval cancer approaches the underlying incidence. Unfortunately, reducing the period between screens is only a partial solution to one aspect of the problem. It can have no effect on high rates of interval cancer in the first two years after a negative screen.

Published results from the Edinburgh randomised breast screening . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Is the three year breast screening interval too long? Occurrence of interval cancers in NHS breast screening programme's north western region
Ciaran B J Woodman, Anthony G Threlfall, Caroline R M Boggis, and Pat Prior
BMJ 1995 310: 224-226. [Abstract] [Full Text]

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ