[Mass screening for breast cancer--the results for 15 years]

Mass screening for breast cancer has been carried out in 13 cities in Osaka Prefecture for the past 15 years. The screening method was inspection and palpation by the physician, and examination by mammography was performed for the women with abnormal findings as the second screening. Among the total of 73,488 examinees (actual number was 44,835 examinees) 3,022 (4.1%) were examined by mammography and 106 (0.14%) patients with breast cancer were detected. Seventy-two of them were found at the first screening, 15 at the subsequent screening, and 19 were interval cases. Sixty-two cases of breast cancer (63.9%) were without lymph node metastasis, and cancer in Stage I and TIS reached 37.8% in this series. These results show that our screening method is valid for detecting the earlier stages of breast cancer.