Clinical audit and standard setting for symptomatic breast imaging in South Thames region

Audit is recognized as an important part of the UK National Health Service Breast Screening programme. This paper describes a simple method of auditing breast imaging in symptomatic women which was applied in the South Thames (East) Region of England. No appropriate standards were available before this audit started. Standards were set at the end of the first cycle by the Regional Radiology Audit Committee and these were used in the second cycle of this audit. A comparison between hospitals which organize both breast screening and symptomatic imaging and those with units providing symptomatic breast imaging only shows no significant difference in the accuracy diagnosis and the false negative and false positive rates between the two. However non-screening units, are significantly more likely to issue an equivocal radiology report (P = 0.000001). Measures to reduce the incidence of equivocal reporting, by prospectively issuing an audit grade with the report and double reporting of equivocal images are recommended.