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Cancer Screening, Diagnosis and Care

European guidelines on breast cancer screening and diagnosis


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3. Screening ages and frequencies

Women aged 50-69: annual vs. triennial screening

Issued on: February 2017

Healthcare question

Should annual mammography screening vs. triennial mammography screening be used for early detection of breast cancer in women aged 50 to 69?

Recommendation

For asymptomatic women aged 50 to 69 with an average risk of breast cancer, the ECIBC's Guidelines Development Group (GDG) recommends not implementing annual mammography, in the context of an organised population-based screening programme

Recommendation strength

Strong recommendation
Very low certainty of the evidence

Justification

The recommendation is strong because the GDG agreed that there is a net harm (small benefits and moderate undesirable effects), large costs and feasibility issues for the implementation of annual mammography screening.

Research priorities

  • The GDG agreed that more research on the effectiveness of the different screening intervals, through comparative studies, would be helpful due to the very low certainty of the evidence.
  • The GDG felt that increased cost effectiveness data, having more contextualised costs and cost-effectiveness analysis and from other settings would be helpful for future recommendations; this included checking the consistency of cost-effectiveness models with new research from trials on breast cancer screening and natural history of breast cancer disease. Also many countries have cost analysis but are not publicly available, and this should be shared with the scientific community.

Supporting material

yes