Despite large breast cancer awareness campaigns and many easily accessible sources of information on mammography screening the results of this survey demonstrate high levels of anxiety, misinformation or lack of information associated with these issues. A key example is the almost total absence of the participants' knowledge of the possibility of overdiagnosis that is supposed to be the case in 19-33% of screen detected breast cancers [4,7,16].

Inherent to the method this online survey's results are limited to female Austrian internet users. But considering the higher literacy levels of internet users compared with non-users [17,18] it is reasonable to assume that the extent of lack of knowledge about breast cancer and mammography screening is even more prevalent in the average target population for screening than this survey indicates.

Gynecologists and radiologists are regarded to be the most trustworthy sources of information while credibility of information provided by public sources is less and is virtually absent regarding politicians.

The results of this online survey suggest that the majority of Austrian women in the screening age group seems not to be able to make an informed decision about participation in a breast cancer screening program.

This is particularly important as in Austria the start of a nationwide breast cancer screening program for women from 45 to 69 years is scheduled for October 2013. Existing health information sources should therefore be reevaluated in order to provide comprehensive and independent information for Austrian women concerning the benefits and harms of breast cancer screening to enable an informed decision.