Published in:
01-09-2006 | Original Paper
Benefit of screening mammography in reducing the rate of late-stage breast cancer diagnoses (United States)
Published in: Cancer Causes & Control | Issue 7/2006
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Objective
We studied the benefit of modern mammography screening in community settings, evaluating age-related differences in rates of late-stage breast cancer detection.
Methods
Our multicenter population-based case–control study included 931 black and white women with incident breast cancer (American Joint Commission on Cancer Stage IIB or higher) diagnosed 1994–1998 and 4,016 randomly sampled controls never diagnosed with breast cancer. Adjusted odds ratios (ORs) estimated the relative rate of late-stage diagnosis in screened and non-screened women.
Results
Women aged 50–64 at diagnosis with at least one screening mammogram in the previous 2 years were significantly less likely to have late-stage diagnosis (OR = 0.41, 95% CI 0.33–0.52). Results for women aged 40–49 were consistent with a screening benefit, although the confidence interval marginally overlapped the null (OR = 0.81, 95% CI 0.64–1.02). Mammography screening was associated with lower rates of late-stage breast cancer among both premenopausal (OR = 0.64, 95% CI 0.50–0.81) and postmenopausal (OR = 0.44, 95% CI 0.35–0.56) women.
Conclusions
With modern mammography in the community, rates of late-stage breast cancer diagnoses are lower in screened compared to non-screened women ages 40 and older, but age-related differences persist.