[An epidemiological approach to increase mass screening efficiency, by finding high-risk group of esophageal cancer]

An improvement of mass screening efficiency for esophageal cancer was studied by a simple form of questionnaire on the basis of case-control study in Saitama prefecture. This questionnaire consisted of several questions on risk-associating factors and the answers were scored such that the exposure to plural factors was quantified. The high-scored group is then regarded to be at high risk and to be examined for the cancer. The selection of factors for questionnaire was made by estimating the efficiency of screening. The expected detection rates were high with the range from 0.16 to 0.27% for males and 0.04 to 0.09% for females, contrasting to the rates of 0.05 and 0.01% without pre-screening by the questionnaire.