Avoidable surgical consultations in women with a positive screening mammogram: experience from a southern region of the Dutch breast screening programme.

Introduction: According to current Dutch guidelines, all women with a positive screening mammogram are referred for a full hospital assessment, which includes surgical consultation and radiological assessment. Surgical consultation may be unnecessary for many patients. Our objective was to determine how often surgical consultations can be avoided by radiological pre-assessment.

A blind review and an informed review of interval breast cancer cases in the Limburg screening programme, the Netherlands.

Objective: To investigate the proportion of interval breast cancers that could have been detected at the previous screening examination, and to gain more insight into the characteristics of these tumours.

Setting: Breast cancer screening programme in mid- and southern Limburg, the Netherlands.

Method: Firstly, previous screening mammograms of 92 interval cancer cases were blindly reread by the radiologists from two different units as part of their daily screening workload.