Screen Test
Every year millions of women are screened with X-rays to pick up signs of breast cancer. If this happens early enough, the disease can often be treated
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. According to a survey published last year, 21 countries have screening programmes. Nine of them, including Australia, Canada, the U.S. and Spain,
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women under 50.
But the medical benefits of screening these younger
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are controversial, partly because the radiation brings a small risk of inducing cancer.
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, younger women must be given higher doses of X-rays because their breast tissue is denser.
Researchers at the Polytechnic University of Valencia analyzed the effect
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screening more than 160,000 women at 11 local clinics. After estimating the women"s cumulative dose of radiation, they used two models to calculate the number of extra cancers this
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cause.
The mathematical model recommended by Britain"s National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) predicted that the screening programme would
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36 cancers per 100,000 women, 18 of them fatal. The model preferred by the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation
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a lower figure of 20 cancers.
The researchers argue that the level of radiation-induced cancers is "not very significant"
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to the far larger number of cancers that are discovered and treated. The Valencia programme, they say, detects between 300 and 450
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of breast cancer in every 100,000 women screened.
But they
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that the risk of women contracting cancer from radiation could be reduced by between 40 and 80 percent if screening began at 50 instead of 45, because they would be exposed to
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radiation. The results of their study, they suggest, could help "optimise the technique" for breast cancer screening.
"
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is a trade-off between the diagnostic benefits of breast screening and its risks," admits Michael Clark of the NRPB. But he warns that the study should be interpreted with caution. "On the
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of the current data, for every 10 cancers successfully detected and prevented there is a risk of
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one later in life. That"s why radiation exposure should be minimised in any screening programme."