81 Has the transition to digital mammography in breast cancer screening resulted in real benefits?

Abstract

Most breast screening programmes worldwide have replaced Screen-Film mammography (SFM) with Full-field Digital Mammography (FFDM). While FFDM provides significant technical and practical advantages over SFM in the provision of population screening programs, whether this move has had beneficial effects on health outcomes remains unclear. An increase in screen-detection rates is only beneficial if the additional cancers detected would have otherwise presented at a later stage and caused morbidity and premature mortality. An indirect measure of this is an observed decrease in the interval cancer rate.

The objective of this study is to compare health outcomes before, during and after the transition from SFM to FFDM in women in NSW, Australia. To do this, we will use linked data to capture women’s journeys from screened/unscreened to cancer diagnosis/no cancer diagnosis to treatment/no treatment and to dead/alive. For the period 1988 to _, a cohort of women with records from Breastscreen NSW, and a second, but substantially overlapping, cohort of all women diagnosed with breast cancer will have their data linked with records in the NSW Central Cancer Registry, NSW Admitted Patient Data Collection, and the NSW Mortality Data.