Breast screening: Experience versus expertise

In the UK fewer radiologists are now specialising in breast cancer screening. Consequently, a number of radiographers have been specially trained to interpret mammograms so as to double-read with existing radiologists. Each year some 97% of these film-readers read a set of difficult cases ('PERFORMS') as a means of self-assessing their skills. We investigated whether these trained radiographers performed as well as breast-screening radiologists on this difficult set of cases. Overall, radiographers who have not read the same volume of crises as radiologists did not perform as well on this particular task. These results support the current UK practice of radiographers double reading with radiologists.