Recall Rate of Opportunistic Screening Mammography in a University Referral Breast Center in Iran

Abstract

Background: No information has been published on the effectiveness of digital non-diagnostic opportunistic screening mammography in Iran that is measured by recall rate as one of its indices. Objectives: In this longitudinal study, we measured recall rate of non-diagnostic mammography at a tertiary referral university hospital and made a comparison with reported international data. Methods: We examined 9395 digital mammograms performed in 2014 - 2015 from which, 2930 were the first-time and 6465 were subsequent mammography. The patients were referred to the university hospital by their clinicians during annual check-ups while none of them had any chief complaint. The mean age was 49 years. We calculated recall rate, sensitivity, specificity, and cancer detection rate. Results: Breast cancer was diagnosed in 80 patients. Recall rates were 29% for the first-time and 22% for subsequent mammography, and the overall rate of cancer incidence was 8.5 per 1000 mammograms (80/9395) with specificity of 75.9%, sensitivity of 97.5%, PPV of 3.4%, and NPV of 99%. Conclusions: The recall rate was much higher in this setting than the acceptable range reported in literature. However, the sensitivity and detection rate were higher; thus, the higher recall rate could be due to some differences in the patient population such as being at younger ages and higher risks.