[French program of breast cancer screening: Radiologist viewpoint]

Abstract

French program of breast cancer screening is implemented since15 years and results are in adequation with international guidelines except for participation. To answer to recurrent controversies about breast cancer screening, publications from National Institute of French cancer registry confirm the positive impact of screening on decreasing mortality for participating women. The harms of mammography (and not from screening) need to be communicated to the invited women to help them to make decision about participation but also the risk of worse prognosis in case of symptomatic cancer. The future of screening will be different and works are in progress to find new ways to select women who will beneficiate for screening and whose cancer needs to be treated. Until then, the only way to screen for breast cancer stays the mammographic process as well as other technics in case of dense breast or in case of family history of breast cancer.

Keywords: Breast screening; Cancer du sein; Digital breast tomosynthesis; Dépistage; Evaluation; Harms; Inconvénients; Mammography; Tomosynthèse; Évaluation.