BMJ  2005;330 (23 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7497.0-c

Improve your patients' informed consent about screening mammography

Benefits and harms of biennial screening mammography are finely balanced. Barratt and colleagues (p 936) present easy to use, age specific estimates of benefits and harms, providing data that could help support individual women's informed choices about screening. Overall, for every 1000 women screened over 10 years, between 167 and 251 (depending on age) receive an abnormal result, 56-64 have at least one biopsy, and 9-26 have invasive cancer detected by screening. However, more breast cancers are diagnosed among screened women than among those who refuse screening, and fewer screened women die from breast cancer (for example, 33 v 20 diagnosed cancers and 4 v 6 deaths over a period of 10 years in 1000 women aged 50).

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Relevant Article

Model of outcomes of screening mammography: information to support informed choices

Alexandra Barratt, Kirsten Howard, Les Irwig, Glenn Salkeld, and Nehmat Houssami
BMJ 2005 330: 936. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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