The feasibility of routinely collecting detailed information about menopausal history and menopause therapy use from women participating in Australian State and Territory BreastScreen programs

Abstract

Use of menopause therapies such as hormone therapies (HT) is associated with reduced mammographic sensitivity and screening effectiveness, and there is some suggestion that this differs according to HT formulation.At this time, the Victorian arm of the Australian breast cancer screening program (BreastScreen Victoria) collects some information about HT use at each screen, without detail about HT type or other menopause therapies. We examine the feasibility of extending the information collected to include more detailed information about the use of prescribed and non-prescribed menopause therapies, as well as the age at onset of menopause, reasoning that such data collection would generate a large database that could be used to further investigate the role of menopause therapy use and menopause in screening performance. We find that women show good recall of most information, except menopause therapy product name, which was recalled well only for formulations ceased up to two years prior to survey. We conclude that routine collection of this information is feasible within the biennial screening program.