Breast cancer screening
Death rates from breast cancer have fallen since the introduction of the BreastScreen Australia programme, which began in 1991.
BreastScreen Australia is a national programme that provides free screening mammograms every 2 years for women aged 50 to 69. Free mammograms are also available to all women over 40, although BreastScreen Australia specifically targets women aged 50-69.
A mammogram is a low-dose X-ray of a woman’s breasts, which is used to help detect breast cancer at an early stage.
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), the death rate for the target age group declined from 67 deaths per 100,000 women in 1988 to 52 deaths per 100,000 women in 2001.
Earlier detection and treatment are considered to have contributed to the decline in death rates because of the high participation by women in screening programmes.
More than 1.5 million women participated in BreastScreen Australia screening in 2000 and 2001. Of these women, more than one million were in the screening target age group of 50-69 years.
Early detection of breast cancer means that treatment can commence earlier and be more effective. Breast cancer detected in the early stages is also less likely to spread to other parts of the body.
In 2001, 65 per cent of women with a screen-detected breast cancer in the target age group were women with early stage small cancers rather than the potentially more dangerous later-stage larger cancers.
And testing of women who had previously been screened showed they had a higher proportion of small cancers rather than larger invasive cancers than women who had not been screened before (67 per cent compared with 56 per cent).
Last Reviewed: 19 December 2003
