Background : Cancer is the leading cause of death in Korea. Stomach cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, lung cancer are the three most prevalent cancers in Korean man, and cervical cancer, stomach cancer, breast cancer are the three- most prevalent cancers in Korean women. The goal of cancer screening is to detect cancer when it is early and treatable, if not curable. And most of the developed countries had developed the national recommendation for cancer screening which has increased the cure rate and survival of cancer patients. So we need to develop our own recommendation for the screening of prevalent cancers in Korea.
Methods : We reviewed the articles on cancer screening which has been reported in various medical journals including the abstrcts from the symposium of Catholic Cancer Center on cancer screening, which was held in 1996.
Results : We summerized recommendations for screening of stomach cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, cervical cancer as well as breast cancer, which might not be able to reflect the consensus idea from all specialists working in this field.
Conclusion : The cancer screening should include informations on the adequate time to start the screening test as well as the interval and types of tests required. It would be ideal if government took initiative in providing those recommendations together with the reimbursement from the medical insurance for the screening tests. We need to continue our efforts to establish the national consensus for the recommendations for prevalent cancers.
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