HC Deb 18 January 2002 vol 378 c540W
Mr. Hammond

To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make it his policy that women who have suffered pre-menopausal breast cancer will be subject to automatic recall under the NHS breast cancer screening programme. [27756]

Yvette Cooper

National guidelines1 state that women who have been treated for breast cancer should undergo mammography yearly during the first five years after surgery, and every two years afterwards, regardless of age. The national health service breast screening programme invites women aged 50 to 64 for mammography every three years, to be extended to the age of 70 by 2004. It is for a woman's clinical team to decide whether she enters the breast screening programme at age 50 or if she is monitored outside the programme.

1 Improving Outcomes in Breast Cancer: The Manual (July 1996). This is being updated for publication in 2002.