Radiologists Get Good Grade on Mammo Screening

A study on mammography screening conducted on 1.1 million women indicated that results from mammography screening across the United States surpassed performance recommendations, setting a new benchmark for breast cancer detecting rates for U.S. radiologists.
The medical audit, funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), involved 188 mammography facilities nationwide, included women who had undergone at least one mammography screening from 1996-2002, totaling 2.6 million screening exams assessed by 807 radiologists and revealed that the cancer detection rate is 4.8 per 1,000 women.
“There have been no data available for mammographers in the United States to give context to anyone’s individual performance results. All prior guidelines were best guesses from a panel of experienced radiologists,” said Robert D. Rosenberg, M.D., lead researcher and professor of Radiology at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. “With a cancer detection rate of 4.8 per 1,000 women, our results show that most radiologists who are reading mammograms are performing well. Mammography, combined with better breast cancer treatments, appears to be helping to decrease the number of deaths from breast cancer.”