Attendance and non-attendance for breast screening at the south east London breast screening service.

OBJECTIVES: To ascertain the reasons for a low rate of response for breast screening. DESIGN: All relevant aspects of the organisational process examined, including general practitioners' notes. Non-responders visited and interviewed. SETTING: An inner city breast screening service working on the model advocated by the Forrest report. SUBJECTS: 288 Women aged 50-64 registered with several general practices and invited for screening by post. MAIN OUTCOME: Determination of factors important for success of breast screening programmes. RESULTS: After five women were excluded by their general practitioners the response rate was 129 out of 283 (46%), but 99 (35%) of the women did not receive their invitations because of inaccuracies in the family practitioner committee's database and general practitioners failing to check women's addresses completely. CONCLUSIONS: Increased rates of response will depend on enabling general practitioners to check addresses and on an increased awareness of the importance of information.