Key performance indicators of breast cancer screening programmes in Italy, 2011-2019

Performance indicators for organised breast cancer screening programmes in Italy, 2011-2019, were evaluated.

Aggregated data were gathered by the National Centre for Screening Monitoring from over 150 regional or sub-regional screening programmes in Italy. Invitation and examination coverage, participation rate (PR), recall rate (RR), detection rate, positive predictive value (PPV) for the target population as a whole (women aged 50-69), by 5-year age-class, geographical macro-area (North, Centre, South-Islands with the exception of three Regions for missing/uncomplete data) and Region were estimated.

Coverage showed an increasing positive trend, especially in the South-Islands, and PR was stable all over Italy. On the other hand, an increasing RR and decreasing PPV were recorded, especially at the first screening test and in some regions.

The positive increase in coverage is accompanied by a worsening of some performance indicators for which a better resource allocation and staff training are required. For this reason, further and continuous monitoring is mandatory.