Around 3,500 women aged 50-70 will be receiving their invitations to attend a breast screening in June.
The Breast Screening Service visits Orkney every three years and will be returning to the island on June 7.
On their last visit in 2018, 81% of eligible women attended the mobile unit for their screening. According to NHS statistics, uptake of the tests in Orkney is well above the Scottish average.
Breast services manager, Sarah Philip, said: “Orkney has an impressive record with breast screening uptake and I would urge all eligible Orkney women to continue to take advantage of this important screening programme as they have done in the past.”
Women who attend the screening will have two views taken of each breast. Women who require further assessment will be asked to the centre in Aberdeen for review.
Mrs Philip added: “It is really important that women continue to come for screening each time we visit Orkney so that we can ensure there have been no changes in the three years since we were last year. If any woman missed of failed to attend three years ago it is still important to come along for screening this time.”
The mobile unit will be based at Balfour Hospital in the main car park and it will be there for four months.
Due to a backlog created by the pandemic the service will be unable to accept self referrals from anyone outside of the eligible age group. Mrs Philip urges anyone with symptoms or changes to their breast to visit their GP.
NHS Orkney’s Louise Wilson said: “The risk of developing breast cancer increases as you get older and the best way of screening for breast cancer is by having regular mammograms as you may not be able to see or feel any early changes in the breast tissue.
“Detecting cancer early provides the best chance of successful treatment. We can be confident that we can improve survival outcomes for people with cancer by detecting it earlier. If you have cancer then the earlier it is treated the better and screening is a way of detecting cancer at an early stage.”