Women over 70 years of age should no longer be screened for breast cancer, the Leiden university medical centre LUMC said on Tuesday.

The age limit for screening was raised to 75 in 1998, but the LUMC says this often leads to unnecessary treatment when small tumors are found and then treated.

Researchers at the LUMC looked at whether treating these small tumors resulted in a fall in the number of aggressive tumors, but this is not the case, the Nos reports.

There is a lot of discussion about the national breast cancer screening system and there is criticism about the LUMC research which does not take death rates into account. These have fallen in recent years, the Nos says.

The LUMC says falling death rates are not just the result of screening, but also because of better treatment and more awareness of breast cancer.