Breast cancer screening: Update in the Australian context

The Australian mammography screening program was introduced as a joint Commonwealth and state/territory initiative in 1991. Australian evaluation studies suggest a breast cancer mortality reduction from mammography screening in Australia that is generally higher than estimated from the original field trials (reported by an International Association of Research on Cancer expert group to be about 35% for screening participants aged 50-69 years, and following a meta-analysis of data for all ages, to be about 25%). More research is needed to broaden the evidence on over-detection. Intervention research is also needed to determine the comparative effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of digital breast tomosynthesis in the Australian screening environment.