Breast cancer screening
Wednesday, 09 Jan 2008 09:23
Women aged over 50 are invited for breast cancer screening
Health campaigners have welcomed a dramatic cut in deaths from breast cancer in East Anglia due to cancer screening.
A study assessing the impact of the NHS breast cancer screening programme in the region revealed a 48 per cent reduction in deaths thanks to screening.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the UK, with more than 44,000 women and 300 men diagnosed every year.
Currently the UK's screening programme invites all women aged over 50 to be screened once every three years but the government aims to extend this so that women aged 47 to 73 are invited for screening by 2012.
Around one and a half million women are screened every year, resulting in an estimated 1,400 lives saved annually.
Professor Stephen Duffy, lead researcher and Cancer Research UK's professor of cancer screening, said the latest findings from East Anglia provide "the strongest evidence yet that screening programmes save lives".
"We hope to collect data from other regions in the future, allowing us to compare programmes across the UK, bringing the best practices to areas that aren't performing as well," he added.
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