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Using Patient Navigation to Reduce Time to Diagnosis of Breast Cancer in Uganda
Zeridah Muyinda1, Katie M Davis2, Samuel Kalungi3
1Department of Radiology, Mulago Hospital, Kampala, Uganda; Senior Consultant Radiologist, Clinical Head of Imaging, Mulago National Referral Hospital.
Purpose:
The Ugandan Ministry of Health adopted BI-RADS as standard of care in 2016. The authors performed a medical audit of breast ultrasound practices at four tertiary-level hospitals to assess interpretive performance. The authors also determined the effect of a low-cost navigation program linking breast imaging and pathology on the percentage of patients completing diagnostic care.
Methods:
The authors retrieved 966 consecutive diagnostic breast ultrasound reports, with complete data, for studies performed on women aged >18 years presenting with symptoms of breast cancer between 2018 and 2020 from participating hospitals. Ultrasound results were linked to tumor registries and patient follow-up. A medical audit was performed according to the ACR's BI-RADS Atlas, fifth edition, and results were compared with those of a prior audit performed in 2013. At Mulago Hospital, an intervention was piloted on the basis of patient navigation, cost sharing, and same-day imaging, tissue sampling, and pathology.
Results:
In total, 888 breast ultrasound examinations (91.9%) were eligible for inclusion. Compared with 2013, the postintervention cancer detection rate increased from 38 to 148.7 cancers per 1,000 examinations, positive predictive value 2 from 29.6% to 48.9%, and positive predictive value 3 from 62.7% to 79.9%. Specificity decreased from 90.5% to 87.7% and sensitivity from 92.3% to 81.1%. The mean time from tissue sampling to receipt of a diagnosis decreased from 60 to 7 days. The intervention increased the percentage of patients completing diagnostic care from 0% to 100%.
Conclusions:
Efforts to establish a culture of continuous quality improvement in breast ultrasound require robust data collection that links imaging results to pathology and patient follow-up. Interpretive performance met BI-RADS benchmarks for palpable masses, except sensitivity. This resource-appropriate strategy linking imaging, tissue sampling, and pathology interpretation decreased time to diagnosis and rates of loss to follow-up and improved the precision of the audit.
