Breast screening con

Breast cancer screening may do more harm than good as women are put through needless operations and gruelling treatment, according to a study.

Experts say women are being kept in the dark about the health risks. Many could even be undergoing unnecessary breast removals.

They claim the benefits of mammography are being hyped by the Health Service in what amounts to a 'con-trick' on the nation's women.

Women aged between 50 and 64 are invited to have a breast X-ray every three years.

But the study by experts at the University of Leicester - reported in the British Medical Journal - is the latest to question the value of the £52million NHS breast screening service, which treats around 1.5million women a year and is credited with saving 1,250 lives annually.

Last year, leading breast cancer specialist Professor Michael Baum, of University College Hospital in London, warned that screening may do more harm than good.

Experts in Denmark also found women undergoing screening face a 30 per cent higher risk of surgery, much of it unnecessary. Epidemiologist Hazel Thornton of the University of Leicester, who led the latest study, said: 'The suggestion that breast cancer is one thing that can be prevented by screening is a dreadful con-trick.

'You can go for screening and land yourself in a whole heap of trouble. But women are not being told about this.

'For a start, they are being told they have a one in nine chance of getting breast cancer, when that figure applies to women who reach the age of 80. It is all so very misleading.'

She added: 'The decisions about the benefits of breast screening have until now been made by paternalistic agents of the state, rather than women supported by good information and their GP or others.

' Tensions exist between the demands of the screening industry's pursuit of good uptake and properly promoting informed choice of patients. Harms are often dismissed as a price worth paying for the perceived general good.'

Mrs Thornton said women having screening are more likely to face surgery and aggressive radiotherapy treatments if doctors find a lump. Radiotherapy puts stress on the heart and increases the risk of heart attacks, meaning women's health may be more at risk than from some breast tumours.

About 50 per cent of some slow-growing tumours - called ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) - would never develop into cancer in the patient's lifetime.

Around 2,000 cases of DCIS are picked up through screening every year.

Surgeons are more likely to cut out benign lumps if a woman has been screened, creating psychological as well as physical scars and fears in her next generation of female relatives.

Julietta Patnick, national co-ordinator of the breast screening programme, defended the service which picks up around 10,000 cancers a year.

'It might lead to women having to face the choice of going through a mastectomy if a cancer is detected, but breast screening does save lives,' she said.