A Proposal for Group Mass Screening for Breast Cancer

Effect of Change to Elderly Health Law

Abstract

In 1998 mass screening for breast cancer was excluded from the Elderly Health Law by the Ministry of Welfare. As a result the financial burden is expected to increase on cities, towns and villages. We are afraid that this change will lead to a reduction in, or the abolition of, mass screening for breast cancer. To avoid this situation we should encourage local communities to continue mass screening by offering a screening test that is affordable and of higher accuracy than all previous tests. Therefore, we are proposing a new Group Mass Screening Format with three steps : (1) gather a large number of women in one place, (2) have them perform accurate self?examination, and (3) provide an examination by a physician only to those women who complain of abnormalities or have a large number of risk factors.
Women with abnormal findings would undergo further examinations by mammography and ultrasonography. Implementing this format will require educating the general population about breast cancer and training the women in “the accurate breast self-examination”.
An additional benefit of the proposed Group Mass Screening Format is that we will be able to introduce mammography for mass screening because of the low cost of this format.