Norway study: routine endometrial cancer screening "inadvisable"
This article was originally published in Clinica
Executive Summary
Despite an incidence of 500 cases of endometrial cancer in Norway each year, there is no evidence to suggest that mass screening would reduce this figure, says Helga Salvesen, from the gynaecological clinic at Haukeland Hospital in Bergen. In an article published this month in the Journal of the Norwegian Doctors' Association (Tidsskr Nor Laegeforen 2002; 122: 1767), Dr Salvesen conceded that the relatively high incidence, the possibility of effective, early-stage treatment of the disease, combined with the fact that the endometrial mucus membrane is easily accessible for examination, do indicate that screening could be beneficial. "[However] the quality of available methods is too low for a person to be declared either apparently healthy or ill with a reasonable degree of accuracy in a mass screening of the population," she added.