ON DECRYPT
This Tuesday October 1st marks the first day of Pink October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month. One of the objectives of this event is to encourage women to participate in the generalized screening program set up in 2004, a mammogram every two years between the ages of 50 and 74. Yet every year in France, there are still 50,000 new cases and 12,000 women dying of breast cancer. So, some question the effectiveness of screening. But what do you blame him? And how to improve it? Europe 1 takes stock.
A disturbing finding, first: only half of women follow the generalized screening for breast cancer and do a mammogram every two years with the right receipt from their 50s. This is very little, even though between 10 and 15% of women do non-protocol screening, with a prescription from their gynecologist.
The track of individualized screening
Over-diagnosis, then, remains an important problem. Some tumors are cancers that do not evolve but are still treated, in doubt. These cases account for 10 to 15% of breast cancers today. The patients go through, unnecessarily, a period of treatment and anxiety. Finally, false positives - lesions that look cancerous but ultimately benign biopsy - are still very numerous.
To remedy these problems, the track of individualized screening is evoked. Every woman would do tests based on her own risk. For example, a high-risk woman - because of family history, hormonal history, or poor lifestyle - may start mammograms earlier, at age 40, and then do them every year. A low-risk woman could start later, at age 50, and do it only every three or four years.