Abstract
The International Cancer Screening Network (ICSN) convened its biennial meeting from 23 to 25 October 2012 in Sydney, Australia, in conjunction with the Sydney International Breast Cancer Congress. The ICSN is a voluntary consortium of countries that have population-based cancer screening programmes. ICSN is sponsored by the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health, and was established in 1988 to evaluate breast cancer screening within the context of clinical practice or organized settings. The consortium has since expanded to explore specific questions related to cancer screening in practice for several cancers, including breast, colorectal, cervical and lung. ICSN is focused on collaborative research aimed at identifying and fostering efficient and effective approaches to worldwide cancer control through population-based screening.
Nearly 180 cancer screening researchers, evaluators and programme leads from 24 countries, representing five regions of the world (Europe, North and South America, Asia, and Oceania) attended the three-day ICSN meeting. The scientific programme was developed by an 18-member international planning committee, which selected the following topic areas as the focus of the scientific presentations:
Evaluating new technologies and their readiness for incorporation into cancer screening programmes; Benefits, harms and costs of cancer screening programmes, and factors that influence policy and decision-making about screening programmes; Roles of allied health professionals and lay health workers in cancer screening; Feasible technology approaches to screening in low-resource countries.
There were seven keynote or topic overview presentations, 31 oral presentations selected from a competitive abstract review process, two panel discussions and a poster session featuring over 90 posters on a variety of cancer screening topics. Key issues that emerged from the sessions included the need for accurate measures of the harms and benefits of cancer screening so that meaningful comparisons across programmes and countries can be made; identifying ways to reduce false-positives, over-diagnosis and over-treatment; how to implement individualized screening within population-based programmes; incorporating co-morbidity into determinations of stopping ages for cancer screening; evaluating cervical cancer screening strategies in the presence of human papillomavirus vaccination and testing; use of specific technologies and non-physician health workers to deliver cancer screening in low resource countries; and integrating research into screening programmes and practice.
The scientific sessions were further augmented by a day of meetings devoted to the ICSN's four working groups and two interest groups. The ICSN working groups include: colorectal cancer screening participation rates, ductal carcinoma in situ, radiology audit feedback for mammography interpretation and international test sets for mammography interpretive performance. Each working group is developing at least one manuscript to report the results of its international collaborative project. The ICSN interest groups include: primary care and cancer screening and lung cancer screening. Working groups that will be active over the next three years include: colorectal cancer screening participation, cervical cancer screening, lung cancer screening and primary care and cancer screening.
The ICSN will next meet in 2015 in the Netherlands, with the cancer screening unit of Erasmus University Medical Center co-hosting the meeting with NCI.
For more information on the ICSN, including the current and past activities of ICSN working groups and collaborative publications, please visit their website: http://appliedresearch.cancer.gov/icsn/