Published estimates of breast cancer overdiagnosis from randomised mammography trials range from near zero to about 50%, depending on how exit screening is handled. The authors reanalysed the trials in a single framework, measuring the extra cancers in screened groups against the pattern seen in Denmark's Funen screening programme. At 52 points in follow-up the extra cancers closely tracked that pattern, which the authors read as compatible with overdiagnosis below 5%.
Why it is interesting: Overdiagnosis is the contested quantity in breast screening policy, and published estimates have spanned near zero to 50%.
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