[The economic evaluation of the early diagnosis of breast carcinoma: a review of the literature].

This paper reviews the economic aspects of screening for breast cancer: from a bibliographic search we identified studies on complete economic evaluation of screening programs in different parts of the world. At the methodological level, it goes as far as proposing a reference model for economic evaluation. An examination of the results obtained from various studies indicates that the introduction of screening program involves a cost per life-year saved of between 3,800 and 88,000 dollars. Allowing for quality of life, the range is 4,050 to 91,650 dollars. A discussion of some examples of sensitivity analysis shows how, and how much, the results change as a consequence of different assumptions regarding crucial variables: discount rate, reference period of the analysis, frequency of screening, age of the target population, volume of activity of each screening unit, compliance, sensitivity and specificity of the test.