Das vor 20 Jahren eingeführte Mammographie-Screening-Programm trägt deutlich zur Verringerung der Brustkrebssterblichkeit bei – das ist das Ergebnis einer umfassenden neuen Studie, die am 9. Juli 2025 in Berlin vorgestellt wurde.
Die Studienergebnisse zeigen, dass unter den Frauen, die am Screening teilnahmen, die Brustkrebs-Todesfälle zwischen 20 und 30 Prozent zurückgingen. Damit kann jeder 4. Brustkrebstod in der anspruchsberechtigten Gruppe verhindert werden.
Für die Untersuchung wurden Daten aus den Jahren 2009 bis 2018 ausgewertet.
Durch diese Auswertungen wird eindrucksvoll bewiesen, dass der Nutzen des Mammographie-Screenings für die teilnehmenden Frauen erheblich größer ist als das sehr geringe Strahlenrisiko bei der Untersuchung.
Annual Evaluation Report 2022 - Jahresbericht Evaluation 2022
In 2022, a good 2.9 million women took part in the screening programme for the early detection of breast cancer. Of these, 86 % took part in the programme every two years. It is desirable that women should take part in the screening programme regularly, as this leads to a much greater number of smaller carcinomas, and carcinomas with a favourable prognosis, being detected. In 2022, a total of almost 18,000 carcinomas were detedcted, with 81 % having no lymph nodes, and 80 % of the carcinomas being a maximum of 2 cm in size.
Evaluating interval carcinomas from the mammography screening provides information on how high the programme sensitivity is and, as a result, on the quality of the early detection. In the current report, the interval carcinoma rates were shown for the period 2016 to 2020 for the federal states of Bremen, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Hesse and Bavaria. With regional differences, an average of 14 to 18 interval carcinomas occured per 10,000 women who had been examined and displayed no findings. By means of the interval carcinoma rates, the programme's sensitivity can be calculated which, for the two periods from 2016 to 2020, reaches a level of 80 % for the screening units in the federal states evaluated.
All the results can be found in the "Jahresbericht Evaluation" for 2022. (In German only.)
Annual Quality Assurance Report 2022 - Jahresbericht Qualitätssicherung 2022
In the year covered by the report, 2022, a good 5.6 million women were invited to a screening. 51% of these women accepted the invitation, which means that 2.9 million women were examined.
Around 123,000 of these women were invited to come to discuss the assessment as at least one of the two physicians responsible for the reading had detected an anomaly. In the case of 90,000 of the women invited back, it was possible to eliminate the suspicion by means of carrying out further examination using imaging. Tissue was removed by biopsy from 33,000 women for the purpose of further histopathological tests. Around 18,000 carcinomas were detected in this way. The detection rate for breast cancer is 6.1 carcinomas per 1,000 women examined.
In the Annual Quality Assurance Report, an increase was shown in tumours subjected to neoadjuvant therapy since 2017, thus taking into account in the evaluation the continuous increase in neoadjuvant therapies. These therapies, if carried out BEFORE any surgical operation, can lead to a reduction in tumour size, which means that the size determined after surgery no longer correlates to the size diagnosed by the imaging process in the screening.
Read all the results in the Annual Quality Assurance Report 2022. (In German only)
The business year 2024 was marked by an extension to the age limit in the programme. From 1 July 2024 onwards, women between the ages of 70 and 75 also became eligible, for the first time, to register for an appointment in the screening programme. A lot of work was, and is, needed on the part of everyone involved to implement this – in organisational, legal and medical terms. The Cooperative Mammography Association mastered these challenges without any problem and will continue to make active contributions to further developing the programme.
Mammo Report: Facts and figures relating to the German mammography screening programme (in German only)
Performance parameters and early indicators are evaluated annually for the German mammography screening programme. The most important of these are the invitation and participation rates, the re-invitation rate, the breast cancer detection rate and the stage distribution.
Programme description - Programmbeschreibung
In 2002, the German parliament decided unanimously to introduce an organised breast cancer screening programme in Germany. Just three years later, the first screening units started their work. Since 2009, all women in Germany between the ages of 50 and 69 have been invited to take part in the screening programme every two years. There are some basic differences between an organised large-scale early-detection programme and an individual healthcare examination. The mammography screening programme involves invitations being sent out to all eligible women (on the basis of data provided by the Citizens’ Registration Office, Einwohnermeldeamt). In other words, the screening programme addresses the broad population. In addition, the mammography screening programme is subject to strict quality assurance and is evaluated regularly.
Here you will find the annual evaluation reports from 2005 onwards and the file on background incidence 2016 as well as the erratum on the invitation rate 2015.
Here you will find the annual reports on quality assurance from 2012 onwards and the associated errata (Erratum to figures in the 2019 and 2020 annual reports).
Here you will find the annual reports from 2015 onwards.