Breast Screening QA
Facts about Breast Screening
Breast screening is a method of detecting breast cancer at an early stage. The first step involves an x-ray of each breast - a mammogram - which is taken while carefully compressing the breast. Most women find it a bit uncomfortable and a few find it painful. The mammogram can detect small changes in breast tissue which may indicate cancers which are too small to be felt either by the woman herself or by a doctor.
About the NHS Breast Screening Programme
The NHS Breast Screening Programme provides free breast screening every three years for all women in the UK aged 50 and over. Around one-and-a-half million women are screened in the UK each year. This will be completed in 2012. Because the programme is a rolling one which invites women from GP practices in turn, not every woman will receive an invitation as soon as she is 50. But she will receive her first invitation before her 53rd birthday. Once women reach the upper age limit for routine invitations for breast screening, they are encouraged to make their own appointment. The NHS Breast Screening Programme is phasing in an extension of the age range of women eligible for breast screening to those aged 47 to 73 starting in 2010.
The programme was set up by the Department of Health in 1988 in response to the recommendations of a working group, chaired by Professor Sir Patrick Forrest, which had been set up to consider whether or not to implement a population screening programme in the UK. The NHS Breast Screening Programme was the first of its kind in the world. It began inviting women for screening in 1988 and national coverage was achieved by mid 1990s.
In the UK the programme has screened more than 19 million women and has detected around 117,000 cancers.
