- GP referral criteria for women at risk of breast cancer miss up to 95 per cent of under-50s who develop the disease within a decade, a University of Cambridge study suggests.
- The analysis, published in the British Journal of Cancer, suggests that the current National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) criteria miss up to 95 per cent of women in this age group who have a higher-than-average risk of breast cancer, and 95 per cent of women who go on to develop the disease within 10 years.
- A new risk assessment tool, Boadicea, which considers family history, reproductive history, lifestyle and genetics, identified eight times as many women under 50 who went on to develop breast cancer.
- Dr Juliet Usher-Smith, of the department of public health and primary care at the University of Cambridge, said: “The current Nice criteria used in general practice are missing up to 95% of women under 50 who will go on to develop breast cancer. It’s time to look again at these criteria in the light of our findings.”
- A spokesperson from NICE said: “Nice welcomes the findings of this study and recognises the potential of multifactorial risk models in improving the identification of women at increased risk of breast cancer in the future.”
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