Breast cancer is one of the prevalent malignancies among females in Hong Kong. To investigate the potential impacts of regular screening on disease diagnosis and mortality, a randomised controlled trial recruited 151, 538 women aged 35-64 with no history of breast cancer and allocated them into screening arm and control arm respectively. This study discovered that breast cancer could be detected at an earlier age in the screening group compared with the control group. A post hoc subset analysis also showed nearly 30% relative reduction in breast cancer mortality in women aged above 50. This study suggested that clinical breast examination conducted every 2 years should be considered.  

Keywords: breast cancer, mortality, diagnosis, clinical breast examination

Reference

Mittra I, et al. BMJ. 2021;372:n256.