A substantial mortality reduction was shown in the intervention group (22.2% versus 5.7%; P = 0.015).
The main determinant of the annual mortality reduction was shown to be the drop of rainy season mortality.
Encouraging results on maternal mortality reduction have been shown in low- and middle-income countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka where they have focused not only on equitable coverage of delivery services but also on its effective coverage (20).
Why could this study show mortality reduction, where all others studies had failed before?
However, maternal mortality reduction in India has shown a secular trend since the beginning of the last decade.
7 Several case control and cohort studies have reported consistent results showing mortality reduction from gastric cancer by radiographic screening in Japan.
These two diagnostic tests have been able to detect many cases of early-stage ovarian cancer; however, a recent randomised study using these two tests failed to show mortality reduction (Buys et al, 2011), the critical metric for screening success.
Given that several other controlled trials of gFOBT screening show mortality reduction from CRC, 2 5 and that such screening is considered not only cost effective but cost saving, 6 this cannot be disputed.
In a retrospective cohort study of 9,949 patients who had undergone gastric bypass surgery and 9,628 severely obese individuals who applied for driver's licenses in Utah, a 7.1-year follow-up of 7,925 age-, sex-, and BMI-matched pairs showed mortality reduction of 40%, with 56% less coronary disease related mortality (2).
Even though breast cancer screening in women aged over 50 years is a well-accepted practice in many countries, and controlled randomised trials have shown mortality reduction of about 25% (IARC Handbook of Cancer Prevention, 2002) in women aged 50 69 years, there is still some debate on screening in this age group.
