Benefit/Risk Analysis of Aggressive Mammographic Screening

Abstract

Based on the results of aggressive screening of 20,000 women and an annual average midbreast absorbed dose of 1 rad/yr a model is described for estimating the benefit/risk ratio for mammography in screening populations of asymptomatic, randomly selected women. Benefits in terms of breast-cancer deaths averted over not screening are estimated. The worst-case estimate of the benefit/risk ratio for 5 annual mammographic examinations on randomly selected asymptomatic women age 35-49 at the start of screening is 3.4 .+-. 1.1 to 1. The corresponding most probable estimate is 8.0 .+-. 3.1 to 1.