Time trends in prognosis of screen-detected and interval cancers in the Dutch breast cancer screening program

A study among participants of a mammography screening program in the South of the Netherlands included 4290 women with screen-detected breast cancer (SDC) and 1352 women with interval breast cancer (IC) between 1995 and 2018, with follow-up until death or end of 2022. The five-year overall survival rate of women with SDCs increased from 91.4% for those diagnosed in 1995-1999 to 95.0% for those diagnosed in 2013-2018 (p<0.001), while the five-year OS rate of women with ICs increased from 74.8% tot 91.6% in these perdiods. A similar trend was observed for the ten-year survival rates. After adjustment for tumor charcteristics, the OS-HR was 0.47 (95% CI 0.38-0.59) for women with SDCs diagnosed in 2013-2018 versus SDCs diagnosed in 1995-1999, and was 0.27 (0.19-0.40) for women with ICs in these periods. The authors conclude that the prognosis of women with ICs has improved since 1995 and is now almost similar to that of women with SDCs.