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BACKGROUND: In the UK, women aged 50-73 years are invited for screening by mammography every 3 years. In 2009-10, more than 2.24 million women in this age group in England were invited to take part in the programme, of whom 73% attended a screening clinic. Of these, 64,104 women were recalled for assessment. Of those recalled, 81% did not have breast cancer; these women are described as having a false-positive mammogram. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this systematic review was to identify the psychological impact on women of false-positive screening mammograms and any evidence for the effectiveness of interventions designed to reduce this impact. We were also looking for evidence of effects in subgroups of women. DATA SOURCES: MEDLINE, MEDLINE In-Process 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.96 to 0.98] than those with normal mammograms, were more likely to have interval cancer odds ratio (OR) 3.19 (95% CI 2.34 to 4.35) and were more likely to have cancer detected at the next screening round OR 2.15 (95% CI 1.55 to 2.98). LIMITATIONS: This study was limited to UK research and by the robustness of the included studies, which frequently failed to report quality indicators, for example failure to consider the risk of bias or confounding, or failure to report participants' demographic characteristics. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that the experience of having a false-positive screening mammogram can cause breast cancer-specific psychological distress that may endure for up to 3 years, and reduce the likelihood that women will return for their next round of mammography screening. These results should be treated cautiously owing to inherent weakness of observational designs and weaknesses in reporting. Future research should include a qualitative interview study and observational studies that compare generic and disease-specific measures, collect demographic data and include women from different social and ethnic groups.
Bond et al. (Fri,) studied this question.