Harms outweigh benefits for women aged 70 and over in national breast cancer screening programs
Extending national breast cancer screening programmes to women over the age of 70 does not result in a decrease in the numbers of cancers detected at advanced stages, according to new research from The Netherlands.
Instead, researchers told the European Breast Cancer Conference that their findings suggest that extending screening programmes to older women results in a large proportion of women being over-treated, and at risk from the harmful effects of such treatment, because these women were more likely to die from other causes than from any tumours detected in the ...