[Mass mammography screening. A means of reducing mortality in breast cancer?]

The already high and still rising mortality rate for breast carcinoma continues to represent a serious problem, especially since neither surgical treatment nor radiotherapy has a significant influence on the prognosis of the disease. Mammography has made it possible to diagnose small and minute carcinomas of the breast before they become clinically symptomatic. Lymph node involvement is histologically confirmed in approximately 20% of breast carcinomas detected by mammography, as opposed to roughly 50% of the tumors diagnosed clinically. Further, in randomized studies mammoscreening was shown to reduce the mortality rates by 30% to 40%. Mammoscreening thus appears to be the only means of diminishing the mortality rate for breast carcinoma.