Mass screening

About: Mass screening is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 34508 publications have been published within this topic receiving 1365148 citations.

Overview of the MNA--Its history and challenges.

Abstract: The Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) is a simple tool, useful in clinical practice to measure nutritional status in elderly persons. From its validation in 1994, the MNA has been used in hundreds of studies and translated into more then 20 languages. It is a well-validated tool, with high sensitivity, specificity, and reliability. An MNA score > or = 24 identifies patients with a good nutritional status. Scores between 17 and 23.5 identify patients at risk for malnutrition. These patients have not yet started to lose weight and do not show low plasma albumin levels but have lower protein-calorie intakes than recommended. For them, a multidisciplinary geriatric intervention is needed, which takes into account all aspects that might interfere with proper alimentation and, when necessary, proposes therapeutic interventions for diet or supplementation. If the MNA score is less than 17, the patient has protein-calorie malnutrition. It is important at this stage to quantify the severity of the malnutrition (by measuring biochemical parameters like plasma albumin or prealbumin levels, establishing a 3- day record of food intake, and measuring anthropometric features like weight, BMI, arm circumference and skin folds). Nutritional intervention is clearly needed and should be based on achievable objectives established after a detailed comprehensive geriatric assessment. The MNA has been shown to be useful for nutritional intervention follow-up as well. The MNA can help clinicians design an intervention by noting where the patient loses points when performing the MNA. Moreover, when a nutritional intervention is successful, the MNA score increases. The MNA is recommended by many national and international clinical and scientific organizations. It can be used by a variety of professionals, including physicians, dietitians, nurses or research assistants. A short screening version (MNA-SF) has been developed, which, if positive, indicates the need to complete the full MNA. It takes less than 4 minutes to administer the MNA-SF and between 10 and 15 minutes for the full MNA.

Canadian National Breast Screening Study: 1. Breast cancer detection and death rates among women aged 40 to 49 years

Abstract: OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the efficacy of the combination of annual screening with mammography, physical examination of the breasts and the teaching of breast self-examination in reducing the rate of death from breast cancer among women aged 40 to 49 years on entry. DESIGN: Individually randomized controlled trial. SETTING: Fifteen urban centres in Canada with expertise in the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. PARTICIPANTS: Women with no history of breast cancer and no mammography in the previous 12 months were randomly assigned to undergo either annual mammography and physical examination (MP group) or usual care after an initial physical examination (UC group). The 50,430 women enrolled from January 1980 through March 1985 were followed for a mean of 8.5 years. DATA COLLECTION: Derived from the participants by initial and annual self-administered questionnaires, from the screening examinations, from the patients9 physicians, from the provincial cancer registries and by record linkage to the Canadian National Mortality Data Base. Expert panels evaluated histologic and death data. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Rates of referral from screening, rates of detection of breast cancer from screening and from community care, nodal status, tumour size, and rates of death from all causes and from breast cancer. RESULTS: Over 90% of the women in each group attended the screening sessions or returned the annual questionnaires, or both, over years 2 to 5. The characteristics of the women in the two groups were similar. Compared with the Canadian population, the participants were more likely to be married, have fewer children, have more education, be in a professional occupation, smoke less and have been born in North America. The rate of screen-detected breast cancer on first examination was 3.89 per 1000 in the MP group and 2.46 per 1000 in the UC group; more node-positive tumours were found in the MP group than in the UC group. During years 2 through 5 the ratios of observed to expected cases of invasive breast cancer were 1.26 in the MP group and 1.02 in the UC group. Of the women with invasive breast cancer through to 7 years, 191 and 157 women in the MP and UC groups respectively had no node involvement, 55 and 43 had one to three nodes involved, 47 and 23 had four or more nodes involved, and 38 and 49 had an unknown nodal status. There were 38 deaths from breast cancer in the MP group and 28 in the UC group. The ratio of the proportions of death from breast cancer in the MP group compared with those in the UC group was 1.36 (95% confidence interval 0.84 to 2.21). The survival rates were similar in the two groups. The highest survival rate occurred among women whose cancer had been detected by mammography alone. CONCLUSION: The study was internally valid, and there was no evidence of randomization bias. Screening with yearly mammography and physical examination of the breasts detected considerably more node-negative, small tumours than usual care, but it had no impact on the rate of death from breast cancer up to 7 years9 follow-up from entry.