[Natural history of minimal and occult breast cancers. Long term survival and mass screening]

Abstract

It is commonly admitted that small breast cancer detection is usefull for mortality reduction. One must take care of both "lead time bias" and "length biased sampling". An aggressive screening could detect an increased number of prevalent cancers in young women. The annual screening of asymptomatic women could be modified in the future by some compromise strategies fixed on high risk women isolation.