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Date: Tuesday, June 11, 1996 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Kara Smigel NCI Press Office (301)496-6641
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Consensus Development Program is planning a conference to review updated results from studies on the role of breast cancer screening in women ages 40 to 49. The exact date has not been set.
The upcoming conference will include discussion of data that have been published since the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) 1993 International Workshop on Screening for Breast Cancer. Also discussed will be an unpublished meta-analysis by Swedish researchers. The NIH Consensus Development Program and NCI have invited researchers who have conducted randomized breast screening trials both to help structure the conference and to present their findings there. NCI is also inviting researchers to submit unpublished data for peer review and publication in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
As a research agency, NCI has no formal recommendations for cancer screening. Screening is defined as a means of accomplishing early detection of a disease in people without symptoms. The examinations, tests, or procedures used in screening for cancer are not diagnostic -- they generally do not confirm that cancer is present but identify people in need of further testing.
NCI's role has been to identify tests and strategies which are appropriate for screening. The goal of screening the population is to the reduce the number of people dying from cancer.
Years of research have confirmed that women ages 50 to 69 who are screened with mammography on a regular basis have a reduced chance of dying from breast cancer. For women ages 40 to 49, the evidence is less clear, and experts have disagreed on routinely screening these women.
NCI Director Richard Klausner, M.D., said, "There is no universal agreement on screening younger women, including who should be screened and at what interval. Several, but not all, national and professional organizations in the United States recommend that all women age 40 and older should be screened at regular intervals. By holding this conference, we are convening experts to once again look at the available evidence."
The purpose of this NIH Consensus Development Conference will be to update and summarize the evidence for screening mammography in this age group. NIH Consensus Development Conferences are convened to evaluate available scientific information and resolve safety and efficacy issues related to biomedical technology. The resultant NIH Consensus Statements are intended to advance understanding of the technology or issue in question and to be useful to both health professionals and the public.
NIH Consensus Statements are prepared by broad-based, independent panels of non-federal individuals knowledgeable in the field of medical science under consideration. The makeup of each panel represents various sectors of professional and community life and typically includes research investigators, health care providers, methodologists, and a public representative. The panel writes its statement based on presentations by investigators working in areas relevant to the consensus questions during a 2-day public session; questions and statements from conference attendees during open discussion periods that are part of the public session; and closed deliberations by the panel during the remainder of the second day and morning of the third. This statement is an independent report of the panel and is not a policy statement of the NIH or the federal government.
The first NIH Consensus Development Conference, held in September 1977, was also on breast cancer screening. That statement is out of date.
For more information on the upcoming conference, contact the Office of Medical Applications of Research, the office that runs the NIH Consensus Development Program, at (301) 496-1143.
Note to Reporters: The report of the 1993 International Workshop on Screening for Breast Cancer was published in the Oct. 2, 1993 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. If this edition of the Journal is not available to you, you may contact the NCI Press Office at (301) 496-6641 to have a copy of the report mailed to you.
The Cancer Information Service provides a nationwide telephone service for cancer patients and their families, the public, and health care professionals. The toll-free number is 1 800 4 CANCER (1 800 422 6237); services provided in English and Spanish. People with TTY equipment may call 1 800 332 8615.
This document is available through the NCI's CancerNet services on the Web (cancernet.nci.nih.gov) and through Cancer Fax (dial 301-402-5874 from the handset on your fax machine).