Screening Mammography in Finland - 1.5 Million Examinations with 97 percent Specificity

Abstract

A nationwide mammography screening program including women aged 50-59 years at the time of the first invitation and involving more than 100 radiologists was started in Finland in January, 1987. From 1987 through 1997, a total of 1690496 invitations to biennial two-view mammography screening was sent out. The compliance for screening was 88.5% with 1 495744 screening examinations performed during this 11-year period. There were 49020 recalls (3.28% of those attending) for further work-up studies and 9689 women (0.65% of those attending) were referred for surgery. The total number of screening-detected breast cancers was 5595, giving a detection rate of 3.7 cancers per 1000 screening studies. More than half (57.7%) of all surgical biopsies revealed breast cancer and