Open AccessScreening for breast cancer: How effective are our tests? a critical review
Author(s) -
Moskowitz Myron
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
ca: a cancer journal for clinicians
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 62.937
H-Index - 168
eISSN - 1542-4863
pISSN - 0007-9235
DOI - 10.3322/canjclin.33.1.26
Subject(s) - mammography , medicine , breast cancer , predictive value , thermography , stage (stratigraphy) , breast cancer screening , population , cancer detection , cancer , radiology , oncology , paleontology , physics , environmental health , infrared , optics , biology
The primary goal of screening for breast cancer is to detect the disease at a smaller size and presumably earlier stage. A review of the literature is presented, which evaluates the ability of thermography, mammography, and clinical examination to lower the threshold size at detection and evaluate the predictive value of a positive test as compared with the prevalence of cancer existing in the population reported. We have found little evidence to indicate that clinical thermography lowers the stage at detection, and neither does a positive thermogram in screening seem to have a strong predictive value. Clinical examination can lower threshold over current threshold levels, but only at the expense of a very high biopsy rate. The data reported in the literature show that mammography can advance the stage at detection and have a reasonably high predictive value compared with the isoprobability baseline.