The national breast screening service: is it economically efficient?

Currently the UK national breast screening programme only offers routine screening to women aged between 50 and 64. Whilst there are good clinical and economic reasons for not screening younger women, there is no compelling argument for not extending routine screening to older women. In this paper, we show that by diverting screening resources to older women, where cancer is more prevalent, more lives and life-years can be saved for no extra cost. Therefore, the current breast screening programme may be inefficient, and offering screening to older women should be given serious consideration.