Screening means to sort out. In health-care, screening is used to detect
diseases in people who feel they are in good health. Screening is also used to
find preliminary stages of diseases and to identify those people who are at
greater risk of becoming sick than others.

The aim of screening is to improve the chances of survival or to prevent a
serious illness from developing.

Screening is not a perfect method of investigation. Its drawbacks include the
fact that it can give the ‘all clear’ sign to people who are actually sick, or the opposite, lead to healthy people mistakenly being considered sick. In the case of cancer screening, the latter problem is by far the most common. Thus, screening leads to the treatment of many healthy people for cancers they do not have,
and would never have developed.

1. to give balanced information about the beneficial and harmful effects of screening programmes for cancers.
2. to base this information on the most reliable knowledge available, i.e.
   the best scientific investigations and evidence.

Information leaflet
Here at screening.dk you can download an information leaflet on screening for breast cancer (mammography screening) in different languages. We at screening.dk have written the Danish leaflet, and it has been carefully tested and applied by doctors and laymen in Scandinavia. The Danish leaflet has subsequently been translated to the other languages.

John Brodersen, Ole Hartling, Margrethe Nielsen and Peter Gøtzsche.
Copenhagen 9/8 2010.

Download
the leaflet in
English :

SCREENING FOR
BREAST CANCER
WITH MAMMO-
GRAPHY [PDF]