Screening programs for breast cancer in Spain

Abstract

The cancer is the second cause of mortality in Spain, with 97,007 deaths in 2004, which supposes 26.25% of all the deaths. During the last decade, the mortality for cancer of breast has diminished an average of 1.4% annual. Nevertheless, the breast cancer incidence in the woman has continued increasing in the last decade. In Spain, breast cancer has a high survival and experiencing a significant increase. At present, the totality of the Spanish’s Autonomous Communities tells with a Program of Precocious Diagnosis of Cancer of Breast, completely developed, consolidated and that are among the most advanced of the European Union. In the set of the Spanish Programs, of majority form it offers the sifted one to the women from 50 to 69 years. The sum of the population reveille in Spain belongs to 4,308,912 women and to them, 98.9% this under coverage of a program of sifted organized. They have been invited when 4,261,535 women took part. There are in use 227 Mammography’s Units. The reading mammography is realized independently by two radiologists with consensus in case of discrepancies exist. A whole of 460 technical specialists in radiology and 342 medical radiologists are employed at the programs. The quality control physicist-technician of the equipments carries out in agreement with “European Guidelines for quality assurance in mammography screening”. The results of the programs, show a global participation (1990-2006) of 4,786,945 women of the mentioned 7,404,097, which represents a participation rate of 64.65% of the invited women.