I was chatting with my sister the other day about breast screening. She is now of an age where she gets invited for free screening and has had her first ‘invitation’. She said she wasn’t going and, to be honest, I don’t blame her. She’s in good company, when even the President of the Royal College of GPs has stated she ignores the invitations too. See here where I wrote about that.

I’ve written before on this subject and the fact that the jury is really still out about whether it helps us prevent breast cancer or, as I suspect, whether we are diagnosing a lot of ductal carcinomas which actually scare the life out of women and mean they go through traumatic treatment which many experts are now starting to think is totally unnecessary.

As I say, the jury is still out and I waver about the subject every week. Here’s an interesting study I saw this morning though, which suggests that three decades of screening

is having, at best, only a small effect on the rate of death from breast cancer.

Umm. It’s a conundrum, isn’t it? Read the full abstract here for more:

Effect of three decades of screening mammography on breast-cancer incidence.

And also see my other posts on this subject here.

Related articles

• Breast cancer: To screen or not to screen (bbc.co.uk)