Diagnose earlier, live longer? The impact of cervical and breast cancer screening on life span

PLoS One. 2022 Jul 20;17(7):e0270347. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0270347. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Cancer has become a leading cause of death and aroused the cancer scare. Breast and cervical cancer are two main health threats for women. In order to reduce mortality through early detection and early treatment, cancer screening has been widely recommended and applied for breast and cervical cancer detection and prevention. However, the benefit of cancer screening has been a controversial issue for the recent decades. The Chinese government has launched a free screening program on breast and cervical cancer for women since 2009. There is lack of strong data and sufficient information, however, to examine the effect of breast and cervical cancer screening. A Difference-in-Difference model estimated by Cox proportional hazard estimation was applied to evaluate the effects of breast and cervical cancer screening using data from Nown County Cancer Registry between the year 2009 and 2013. Based on the case study in a county of central China, this study found that the screening program reduced the risk of death, but found the lion's share for the benefit has been mainly due to the cervical cancer screening rather breast cancer screening, which may be related to the difference between early detection screening and preventive screening. Our results suggest sufficient funding and better education of related cancer knowledge will be meaningful measures for the prevention and treatment of breast and cervical cancer.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Breast Neoplasms* / diagnosis
  • Breast Neoplasms* / epidemiology
  • Breast Neoplasms* / prevention & control
  • Early Detection of Cancer / methods
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Longevity
  • Mass Screening / methods
  • Uterine Cervical Neoplasms* / diagnosis
  • Uterine Cervical Neoplasms* / epidemiology
  • Uterine Cervical Neoplasms* / prevention & control

Grants and funding

This study was supported by Guangdong Science and Technology Project of Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Center (No. 2017A030223003) administrated by Department of Science and Technology of Guangdong Provincial Government in the form of a grant to JL.