Objective: The aim of the current study was to present early performance
indicators of a breast cancer screening program in Greece.
Methods: Between March 2004 and July 2009, 9621 women aged between 40
and 69 years were recruited into programme on a voluntary basis. The
participating women were residents of two adjacent administrative
regions of Greece. Several performance indicators were calculated for
the first and subsequent screen, separately.
Results: A total of 9621 mammograms were 1st screens and 4462 were
subsequent screens. The attendance rate was almost 1.5%. The technical
repeat rate was 1.7%. On the 1st screen, the recall rate was 11.4%,
while the recall rate of the subsequent screens was 5.5%. The vast
majority of detected cancers were invasive and only the 1/7 of cancers
was identified as DCIS. As concerns tumour size of invasive cancers, the
1.9% and 16.7% was unknown, in the first and subsequent screen,
respectively. Moreover, 38.5% and 44.4% of cancers detected in the 1st
and subsequent screen, respectively, were less than 15 mm in diameter.
Almost 1/5 of diagnosed cancers were interval cancers.
Conclusions: This breast cancer screening programme is the first one in
Greece and the attendance rate is extremely low. Taking into account
that an organised screening programme may benefit women with a reduction
in breast cancer mortality, there is an urgent need to develop a
national-based screening programme, to increase participation and to
improve the information system used to monitor programme performance.
(C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
