Published 24 February 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b807
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b807

News

Screening has halved incidence of cervical cancer in UK

Zosia Kmietowicz

1 London

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

The number of diagnoses of cervical cancer in the United Kingdom has halved since the NHS’s cervical screening programme was introduced in 1988, the latest figures show.

Cancer Research UK says that the number of diagnoses of invasive carcinoma of the cervix fell from 16 per 100 000 in 1988 to eight per 100 000 in 2005.

In the late 1980s in the UK around 4800 women each year were given a diagnosis of invasive cervical cancer; in 2005 the number was 2703. Before the screening programme began cervical cancer was the sixth most commonly diagnosed cancer in women. Now it is ranked 13th.

The number of deaths from cervical cancer has also fallen, from 2000 in 1988 to 921 in 2006. This means that cervical cancer is no longer among the 20 most common causes of cancer mortality.

A spokesperson for the NHS cervical cancer screening programme said that . . . [Full text of this article]


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