Women who skip BreastCheck screening rounds are more likely to present with larger, higher grade breast cancer tumours when they are eventually screened again, researchers have found.
More than 19,000 women who had initially attended for breast screening under the national breast cancer screening programme between 2000 and 2009 and then skipped a screening round before returning to the BreastCheck programme were looked at as part of a study presented at the second All-Ireland conference on population based cancer research in Dublin today.
When they returned to the programme for screening some 200 cancers were detected, which was higher than among groups of women who attended for all rounds of screening.
The National Cancer Screening Service, which conducted the study, is now looking at the factors that resulted in these women only attending for screening intermittently, given the risks involved.
Women aged 50 to 64 years are invited for screening every two years under the national breast cancer screening programme which began in the east in 2000 and went nationwide in 2007.
Dr Patricia Fitzpatrick of the National Cancer Screening Programme said the main message from the study was it was in womens' interest to attend for screening when invited so that if there was a tumour it could be picked up as early as possible to give the patient the best possible outcome.
Meanwhile preliminary results from an All-Ireland study on risk factors for pancreatic cancer, which were also presented, found shift working was not associated with onset of this form of cancer. Previous studies had suggested a link with shift working, but Dr Damien O'Driscoll, a researcher with the National Cancer Registry, stressed the findings were preliminary and will feed into a European wide study of pancreatic cancer that is ongoing. This will allow room for further analysis of the condition.
From work already done in Irish wing of the study, which involved around 200 patients, a previous history of pancreatitis put patients at a 13-fold increased risk of pancreatic cancer while diabetes put them three times more at risk of the disease. Smoking is also a significant risk factor, and while a previous history of shingles was also found to be an increased risk factor in this study Mr O'Driscoll cautioned the analysis was at a very early stage and needed to be confirmed.
A third study suggested a link between fat intake, particularly consumption of red and processed meats, and oesophageal cancer.