Breast screening of little use, study finds

Falling breast cancer death rates have little to do with breast screening but are down to better treatment and health systems, scientists said on Friday, in a study likely to fuel a long-running row over the merits of mammograms.

Researchers analyzed data from three pairs of countries in Europe and found that although breast cancer screening programs had been introduced 10 to 15 years earlier in some areas than in others, declines in death rates were similar.

The findings suggest that "improvements in treatment and in the efficiency of healthcare systems may be more plausible explanations" for falling deaths rates from breast cancer, they wrote in a study in the British Medical Journal.

Breast screening is a hot topic among experts who disagree about whether nationwide mammogram programs do more harm than good. The fear among some is that over-diagnosis may mean many women are undergoing unnecessary radical treatment, suffering the physical and psychological impact of a breast cancer diagnosis that would otherwise not have come up.

Trends in breast cancer mortality rates varied little between countries where women had been screened by mammography for a considerable time compared with those where women were largely unscreened, according to the study.