Mammographic Screening for Breast Cancer

Physicians stress to their patients and to the public in general the importance of finding breast cancer “early.” Women are urged to have annual physical checkups, to acquire the habit of self-examination, and, above all, to take prompt action upon discovering some suspicious finding. At present in this country it is the woman herself in more than 95 per cent of cases who finds the lump in her breast that may prove to be cancer. Unfortunately, by the time a mass is discovered by palpation, reports show that it is usually more than 3.5 cm in diameter; and because in some 65 per cent of the cases axillary metastasis has already occurred, the hope for a five-year survival hardly approximates 50 per cent (1). For more than fifty years mammography has been shown to have promising diagnostic possibilities in breast diseases, particularly cancer. Numerous abortive attempts to invoke its routine use have been made by individual roentgenologists in various parts of the world (4, 7). In the last few years, however,...