Targeted Digital Mammography Screening May Be Cost-Effective for Some

A cost-effectiveness study of the benefits of digital mammography breast cancer screening has found that digital mammography screening does not result in sufficient health gains to justify its increased cost unless its use is limited to younger women or to women with dense breasts.

The study was conducted as part of the Digital Mammography Imaging Screening Trial (DMIST) and involved more than 42,000 women in the United States and Canada through the American College of Radiology Imaging Network (ACRIN).

The researchers, from Dartmouth Medical School (Lebanon, NH, USA) and Brown University (Providence, RI, USA), found a nonsignificant tendency toward better breast cancer detection with conventional film mammography in older women with non-dense breasts, and because of this finding, digital mammography screening for all age groups was not found to be cost-effective.

The article appears in the January 1, 2008, issue of the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.


Related Links:
Digital Mammography Imaging Screening Trial
Dartmouth Medical School
Brown University