The paper «Breast Cancer Screening in Denmark: A cohort study of tumor size and overdiagnosis» was published Tuesday in Annals of Internal Medicine by the authors Karsten Juhl Jørgensen, Peter C. Gøtzsche, Mette Kalager and Per-Henrik Zahl. The paper was supported by an editorial by Otis W. Brawley, chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society. The results from the paper hit the international headlines the same day as the first online publishing.
Findings
The study showed a large increase in non-advanced breast cancers without the expected reduction of advanced breast cancers after introduction of screening. It is likely that 1 in every 3 breast cancers are overdiagnosed (incidence increase of 48 %).
