Nearly 1.9 million women aged 45 and over were screened for breast cancer in England in 2010-11, according to recent Health and Social Care Information Centre figures.
This compares to 1.3 million women screened in 2000-01. Originally women aged 50 to 64 were invited for screening, but in 2001 the age range was extended to include women aged 65 to 70. In 2007, a further extension of the programme to cover women aged 47 to 73 years was announced. Just over 40% of detected cancers in 2010-11 were found to be invasive and less than 15 mm across. This size is usually too small to detect by hand.
