Evaluation of Mammography Performance in the United States: The Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium

The Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium (BCSC) is a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-sponsored collaborative network of mammography registries with linkages to tumor registries and pathology data in the US. It was established in 1994 in response to a legislative mandate from the Mammography Quality Standards Act of 1992 to evaluate the performance of screening mammography in community practice and related breast cancer outcomes. As of May 2006, the BCSC has collected data for more than 2 million women and more than 6 million mammography exams. Approximately 74,000 breast cancers have been diagnosed. The size of the population-based BCSC database, the longitudinal nature of these data on screening and cancer diagnoses, and the multidisciplinary teams of investigators, including radiologists, primary care physicians, pathologists, epidemiologists, health services researchers, and statisticians, make the BCSC a unique research resource. Investigators are encouraged to collaborate with the NCI-supported BCSC on research to improve understanding of breast cancer screening practices and related outcomes in the US.