Long-term benefits of breast screening

LONDON, June 28 (UPI) -- A three-decade study involving 130,000 women shows mammography screening resulted in fewer deaths from breast cancer, British researchers say.

Senior author Professor Stephen Duffy of Queen Mary, University of London, and colleagues compared a group of women in Sweden ages 40-74, who were invited to have regular mammograms with a group who were not, who were tracked for 29 years.

"Breast cancer can take many years to develop so to tell if screening is effective, we need to see how women fair in the long-term," Duffy says in a statement. "In this study, we've continued to monitor women for nearly three decades and we've found that the longer we look, the more lives are saved."

The results showed that 30 percent fewer women in the screening group than in the other group died of breast cancer and that this effect persisted year after year.

"For every 1,000 to 1,500 mammograms, one breast cancer death is prevented," Duffy says. "Unfortunately, we cannot know for certain who will and who won't develop breast cancer. But if you take part in screening and you are diagnosed with breast cancer at an early stage, the chances that it will be successfully treated are very good."

The findings are published online in the journal Radiology.