A study looking at a way of identifying women who have an increased risk of breast cancer due to family history

The research team found that using an online decision tool did help identify women who had an increased risk of developing breast cancer.

Study design
This study was open for women aged between 30 and 60 who had not:

• been diagnosed with breast cancer
• been diagnosed with ovarian cancer
• had an assessment for breast cancer risk in the last year

The research team found people to take part in this study through GP practices in England. They split 8 GP practices into 2 groups at random:

• 4 assessed women’s risk of breast cancer in the usual way using the NICE guidelines
• 4 assessed women’s risk of breast cancer using the online decision tool 

Diagram 1

Results
The research team looked at patients registered at the 4 GP practices using the online decision tool. They identified 7,012 women who could take part in the study. They sent each woman a questionnaire to fill out. This asked questions about their family history of cancer and:

• 1,127 women (16%) returned the questionnaire
• 5,885 women (84%) didn’t return the questionnaire

The research team then entered all the information from the questionnaires into the online decision tool. 

They found that out of 1,127 women who returned the questionnaire:

• 999 women (89%) had about the same risk of developing breast cancer as the general population
• 128 women (11%) may have an increased risk of developing breast cancer

More than half of the women who had an increased risk were less than 50 years old. At the time of the study this was below the age that routine screening was offered.

The doctors referred 66 of the women with a possible increased risk to a specialist service. This was to assess their risk in more detail. They found that:

• 26 women (39%) had a high risk of developing breast cancer
• 30 women (46%) had a medium (moderate) risk of developing breast cancer
• 10 women (15%) had a normal risk of developing breast cancer

Bar Chart 1

The team also looked at the 4 GP practices that assessed women in the usual way. They found that 10 women went to the GP concerned about their family history.

Conclusion
The research team concluded that about 1 in 10 women may have an increased risk of developing breast cancer. They found that it is possible to find out more about people’s risk by using:

• a questionnaire 
• an online decision tool

The suggest more work is done to find out more about this tool, and other ways to assess risk. And to find out more about how much it would cost to use these methods more widely.

Where this information comes from    
We have based this summary on information from the research team. The information they sent us has been reviewed by independent specialists (peer reviewed ) and published in a medical journal. The figures we quote above were provided by the trial team who did the research. We have not analysed the data ourselves.