New recommendations on mammography screening for women over 70 years

Abstract

The new recommendations of the European Council (December 2022) indicate to the Member States to implement mammography screening programs for women aged 45 to 74 and make explicit reference to the European guidelines produced by the ECIBC (European Commission Initiative on Breast Cancer) for operational indications. For women aged 70-74, the ECIBC suggests a three-year interval, rather than two years, and the process of adaptation and adoption of the guidelines in Italy has taken this recommendation as it is. Previous indications for Italian screening programs proposed a two-year interval for all women over 50 years of age. The intervention analyzes the rationale and interpretation of the evidence that led to the formulation of the different recommendations. It discusses whether the new recommendations fit into the perspective of risk-stratified screening that is under evaluation by several studies. it analyzes some of the critical issues of the methodology for developing recommendations in defining the characteristics of complex interventions, in particular the difficulties that the formulation of dichotomous questions finds in answering questions such as what is the best age to stop screening and what is the best interval at any age, which require an analysis of a continuous variable as age or interval duration. Finally, the opportunities and limitations in producing evidence regarding the best interval to adopt in mammography screening are discussed.