Results from a new study suggest that an additional 100 breast cancers could have been detected by screening in London between September 2020 and March 2021 if timed appointments, rather than open invitations, had been used throughout.
To recover from the backlog of women awaiting breast screening (caused by the Covid-19 pandemic) the NHS in 2020 opted to issue open invitations asking women to contact the screening service to book an appointment, rather than the standard pre-booked timed appointments. During this transition period, both appointment types were in use.
The study included women invited for breast cancer screening at one of the six London breast screening services on or after 1 September 2020, grouped according to the type of invitation they had received. Of women offered a timed appointment, 60.6% attended within six months. Among those in the open invitation group, 53.1% attended over the same time period. Results suggest that during this period over 12,000 women in London, who would have been expected to attend if sent the standard timed appointment, received an open invitation and did not attend. In an urban population of high ethnic- and socio-diversity, timed breast screening appointments were associated with a substantial and significant increase in uptake compared with open invitations.
Senior investigator Professor Stephen Duffy said: “As services recover from the pandemic, we need to address the backlog in screens, not just invitations. A screen can only save your life if you attend it, and our results suggest that use of timed invitations can increase attendance considerably.”
Hudson SM, Binysh K, Duffy SW. Did the use of open invitations in place of timed appointment invitations reduce the uptake of breast screening in the London region during the COVID-19 recovery? J Med Screen. 2022 Oct 11:9691413221127583. doi: 10.1177/09691413221127583. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36220103.