Controversies on breast cancer mammographic screening: What to tell women?

Controversies about breast cancer screening are frequent for a long time. The most important criticisms are again effectiveness in terms of breast cancer mortality, false positive results and overdiagnosis. Recent publications including independent review shows that mammographic screening decreases breast cancer mortality from 20% and that overdiagnosis is estimated between 5 to 11%. The benefits of breast cancer screening are significant but we need to give complete information about adverse effects that include false positive, false negative, overdiagnosis and ionizing radiation exposure. (C) 2014 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.