Modeling study demonstrates the benefit of mammography screening up until at least 70-71 years of age.
As mortality increase with age, screening at age 70 years is more beneficial than screening at age 48 years.Why This Matters
This was a modeling study using data from the Munich Cancer Registry for the year 2018, during which 2.92 million mammography screenings were performed.Out of those screened, 13,414 patients were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. The study generated tumor-dependent and tumor-independent deaths in 20 years of follow-up using 21 cohorts of screened vs nonscreened patients between ages 40 and 80 years at 2-year intervals.Year of death was estimated using hazard rates.For the mean tumor size, survival rate at 15 years was 87.8% in the screened group compared with 76% in the nonscreened group.