Breast cancer diagnosis by mammography in Kazakhstan - staging results of breast cancer with double reading.

While mammography has been used for diagnosis of breast cancer in Kazakhstan for a long period, published data are very limited. Recently stress has been placed on increasing the accuracy by double reading of mammograms. Here we provide an overview of breast cancer screening in the different regions of Kazakhstan with data on the stages of cancers detected. A total 459,816 women aged 50, 52, 54, 56, 58 and 60 years were screened in 2012 and 379,903 in the first 9 months of 2013. Clear differences in levels of detection were noted between urban and rural residents, the latter demonstrating lower rates for both screening and cancer detection. Women aged 50 were more likely to undergo screening than their counterparts aged 60. While there were no clear relationships evident between screening rates and stage or numbers of breast cancers observed, this might be due to a number of complicating factors like geographical variation in risk factors as well as ethnicity. Future analyses should focus on the efficacy of mammography in Kazakhstan to reduce mortality.