 |
 |
In article <000501bea1ed$71f734e0$3a22fed4@default>, Klazien Matter- Walstra <[log in to unmask]> writes > Although I know about the relative risk reduction of 0.3-0.25 for > mammography in woman aged 50-70 ( which would mean that in stead of > 470 in the end 329-353 will die of breast cancer), I cannot realy > find numbers about how many women will have a positive screening > result for the first screening and the following, and how many of > these positive results are false positive, or how many cases will > be missed. The figures should be available from the results of a good Medline search on the relevant trials and from audit of the existing programs, but from memory, figures derived from the consultant in charge of our local screening program were, approximately and per year: Benefits: 4 deaths avoided. (High prestige for the local consultant wasn't mentioned, but presumably counts as some sort of benefit.) Costs: 100 diagnoses of cancer (96 would live no longer, but would have a lot longer to contemplate their diagnosis, more years with cancer). 500 (?more) false-positives, and 1 million pounds sterling to the health service. Nobody could produce any figures for loss of productivity etc. due to all those women taking time off to go for screening and follow- up, but I'd be interested to know what can be found. The relevant local population, all ages and both sexes, is about 650,000. The audit figures for the local mammography screening program (false positives etc.) are among the best in the UK. I hope that this helps. Focus groups are quite capable of understanding figures presented in this sort of way. -- Richard Keatinge homepage http://www.keatinge.demon.co.uk %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%