Failure of selective screening for breast cancer by combining risk factors.

The possibilities of selective screening to reduce the costs of screening programmes for breast cancer were considered. Discriminant function analysis was used in an effort to describe a high-risk group of breast cancer, which will be subjected to screening. The high-risk group consisted of females with a combination of reproductive and hormone use characteristics. One-fifth of the breast cancer cases remained in the low-risk group, when the high-risk group was small enough (two-thirds of the population) to yield a meaningful reduction in costs. Selective screening for breast cancer seems to have only limited applicability and is not effective enough for application in public health work.