BMJ  2003;327:868 (11 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7419.868

Letter

Women need better information on routine mammography

Information on expected mortality reduction from attending screening must be correct

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Thornton et al say that claims for the reduction in relative risk of death from breast cancer among women who are screened have ranged from 63% to 6%.1 This is crucial information for women considering attending. Unfortunately the lower limit, attributed to our paper in the BMJ in 2000,2 is no such estimate. The 6% refers to the reduction seen in death rates from breast cancer for invited women (including those screened and non-attenders) in 1998, from a programme that started between 1988 and 1995.

For reasons we explained in great detail in our paper (including the fact that many deaths in the 1990s will have been women with a diagnosis of breast cancer before any invitation to screening), this is most likely to estimate the beginnings of an effect—not the full effect. It is therefore inaccurate and extremely unhelpful to quote this figure to women as an . . . [Full text of this article]

Roger Graham Blanks, epidemiologist

Institute of Cancer Research, Sutton, Surrey SM2 5NG r.blanks@icr.ac.uk


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