Yearly mammograms do detect second breast cancers early, according to new research.

The study also found that though more women are surviving longer after having early-stage breast cancer, they are at risk of developing the disease again – a recurrence or a new cancer, in either breast.

The findings of the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium study are reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Scientists examined 12 years of information from 58,870 screening mammograms in 19,078 women who had had early-stage breast cancer – and an equal number in 55,315 women with no such history. They found that women with a personal history of breast cancer had double the cancer rates of those without such a history.

Women who had suffered breast cancer had 655 second cancers within a year of screening mammography, and those with no prior breast cancer had 342 cancers, with cancer rates of 10.5 vs 5.8 per 1,000 screens respectively. The data was collected in the US and analysed by Nehmat Houssami, an associate professor at the University of Sydney’s School of Public Health and Sydney Medical School and a physician at the Royal Hospital for Women in Australia who said: “The comprehensive data made it possible for us to carefully examine the outcomes of screening.

“This is the first study in the world, to our knowledge, to provide a complete picture of the expected outcomes of mammography screening for women with a personal history of breast cancer.”

Dr Houssami’s collaborator Diana Miglioretti, a senior investigator at Group Health Research Institute, of Seattle, said: “The good news is that most of the breast cancers detected in breast cancer survivors between mammography screens were early stage.”