Breast Cancer: Screening
(asked on 21st October 2019) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many women born in (a) 1965, (b) 1966, (c) 1967, (d) 1968 and (e) 1969 have (i) been invited for breast cancer screening and (ii) taken up an offer of breast cancer screening.
In the Breast Screening Programme women are eligible to be screened from the age of 50 and are invited every three years. Data in the format requested is not available. The data below shows the number invited, uptake and coverage for the age bands 50-52 and 53-54 in 2017-2018.
The figures below are obtained from the 2017-18 Breast Screening Annual Report which can be viewed at the following link:
Number invited (for ages 50-54) in 2017-18.
It should be noted that, women are invited every three years, so the number of invites in 2017-18 only represents approximately 1/3 of women in the 50-54 age band. Invite here refers to ‘first and all routine invitations’ – see report for detailed definitions.
Age Band | Indicator | Unit | Value |
50-52 | Invited | Number | 435,678 |
53-54 | Invited | Number | 290,936 |
50-54 | Invited | Number | 726,614 |
Invites and uptake of those invites for women age 50-54, in England in 2017-18. (This is not the total number of women in the 50-54 age group, just the number invited in 2017-18).
Age Band | Indicator | Unit | Value |
50-52 | Invited | Number | 435,678 |
50-52 | Attended | Number | 293,517 |
50-52 | Uptake | % | 67.4 |
53-54 | Invited | Number | 290,936 |
53-54 | Attended | Number | 200,131 |
53-54 | Uptake | % | 68.8 |
50-54 | Invited | Number | 726,614 |
50-54 | Attended | Number | 493,648 |
50-54 | Uptake | % | 67.9 |
Coverage of the breast screening programme for those aged 53-54 in England, as at 31 March 2018:
Number Resident | 811,351 |
Number Eligible | 809,841 |
Number Ineligible | 1,510 |
Number never screened (either never invited or invited and did not attend) | 157,385 |
Screened in last 3 years | 587,955 |
Screening Coverage (%) | 72.6% |
It would not be suitable to provide coverage for the full 50-54 age group because the official coverage definition starts at age 53 (rather than age 50).