Objectives To investigate the effect of false positive breast screening examination results on subsequent attendance in the UK National Health Service Breast Screening Programme. Methods 253,017 previously screened women who were invited for rescreening were studied. Attendance rates of women who had received a normal result at the last (index) screen were compared with those of women who had received a false positive result. The effects of age, type of index screening examination ( prevalent or incident) and tissue sampling at assessment were investigated.Results Women who had a false positive prevalent index screening examination were significantly more likely to reattend than those who had a normal prevalent index screening examination (87.7% vs. 86.0%). There was no significant difference in reattendance rates between women who had a false positive incident index screening examination and those with a normal incident index screening examination. However, women who underwent needle sampling or open biopsy following false positive incident index screening examinations were 12% and 60% less likely to reattend, respectively, than women whose index screening examinations were normal ( p , 0.001), although there was variation between centres. Increasing age significantly reduced the likelihood of reattendance. The overall reattendance of women who had been screened only once was six percentage points lower than that of women who had been screened more than once. Conclusions The findings suggest that most women who undergo the breast screening assessment process retain confidence in breast screening. Needle sampling and open biopsy should be used judiciously in the assessment of screen-detected abnormalities in view of the reduced reattendance that results from their use after incident screening examinations.
Background:Some women make an informed choice not to attend breast screening, whereas others may have forgotten about the appointment. We report on a randomised trial that investigates whether a reminder letter affects attendance.Methods:Women scheduled for a breast screening appointment were randomised to either receive a reminder letter a few days before their breast screening appointment in addition to the standard invitation letter (intervention) or not (control). The primary outcome was attendance within 30 days of the first offered appointment. Secondary outcomes were attendance within 90 and 180 days.Results:In all, 11 383 (49.9%) women were randomised to the intervention and 11 445 (50.1%) to the control. In the intervention arm, 7759 (68.2%) attended within 30 days of the first offered appointment compared with 7349 (64.2%) in the control arm. This difference was significant (P<0.001). The odds ratio (OR) (95% confidence interval) for the primary end point was 1.19 (1.13–1.26). This was not significantly affected by age, socioeconomic status or type of screen (prevalent or incident). Secondary endpoint analyses supported these results. Results did differ, however, between the different centres studied.Conclusions:This study found that postal reminders increase breast screening uptake, and could be practicable to implement in the NHS Breast Screening Programme.
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