The effectiveness of breast cancer screening

Recommended by the European Union, more and more countries have an organized breast cancer screening program. An X-ray image of the breast (mammogram) is used to detect breast cancer at an early stage with the aim to improve survival and avoid breast cancer mortality. In the literature support is found for decreasing mortality rates after implementing a screening program from 10-30%. Other studies are critical and disprove the reduction or show an increase in mortality. The incidence rate is expected to increase after the implementation of a screening program. The different characteristics of a screening program are showed per country. These characteristics - the starting year of the (pilot) program and age interval - are used to predict breast cancer mortality with OLS and a fixed effects model. Concluded is that the implementation of a screening program leads to a decrease in mortality and increase in incidence rate.