Screening reduces breast cancer mortality in Belgium

In Belgium, women have been invited for breast cancer screening since 2001. In Flanders, more than half of the women accept this invitation, but in French-speaking Belgium only a minority participates and women prefer to take the initiative for a screening mammogram themselves. This is according to the research Pink Ribbon commissioned in 2022. One in 10 respodents do not even want to know about breast cancer screening, while eight in 10 do believe that a screening mammogram can improve breast cancer survival rates.

The latter is confirmed by new Belgian research* published in February 2023. The researchers analyzed the records of 1,571 women who had died from breast cancer between 2005 and 2017 and who had participated in population-based breast cancer screening before their diagnosis. They compared this to a random group of 6,284 women of average age 60. In the group that had participated in the population screening, the death rate from breast cancer was 51% lower than in women who had not participated in the organized screening. This favorable figure was also observed in similar studies in the Netherlands and Italy.

However, researchers have the same caveat: Overdiagnosis lurks just around the corner with screening. This means finding some breast cancers that would never have caused problems, because not all cancer cells grow into a life-threatening breast cancer. Unfortunately, to date, we cannot predict which incipient tumors will grow larger and more malignant and which will not. As a result, treatment is sometimes initiated for "harmless" tumors, which also results in overtreatment.

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*KatrienDe Troeyer, Geert Silversmit, Michael Rosskampet al.The effect of the Flemishbreast cancer screening program on breast cancer-specific mortality: Acase-referent study.Cancer Epidemiology2023; 82: 102320.