LAUSR

The article by Noguchi and colleagues in this issue of the MJA1 is timely and motivated by an important aim: to improve breast screening for both women and its funders. The authors conducted a comprehensive analysis of routinely collected data for all screening mammograms by BreastScreen WA over the ten years from July 2007. Although they studied screening episodes rather than individual women, they found evidence that key performance indicators — screendetected and interval cancer rates — differed by age, family history, hormone replacement therapy use, benign breast disease, and breast density. Importantly, the strengths of the relationships between some factors and performance varied by age group.1