A CMR study explores whether the mammographic technologist has an effect on the radiologists’ interpretative performance of screening mammography in community practice. Results from this study demonstrate that the technologist has a statistically significant effect on the radiologists’ recall rate, sensitivity, specificity, and cancer detection rate for both screen film mammography (SFM) and full field digital mammography (FFDM) (P values <.01). For PPV1, variability by technologist was observed for SFM (P value <.0001) but not for FFDM (P value=.088). This study demonstrates that the interpretative performance of radiologists in screening mammography varies substantially by the technologist performing the examination.
The data used for this study is from the CMR current project ‘Technologist Effect on the Accuracy of Mammography’ (TEAM).
Click here to read more about the TEAM project.
To read more, see the following article on the Academic Radiology website: The Influence of Mammographic Technologists on Radiologists' Ability to Interpret Screening Mammograms in Community Practice