Study: Recently Trained Radiologists Best at Detecting Breast Cancer

A new study suggests that the most recently trained radiologists --- not doctors who read the most mammograms each year -- are best at detecting breast cancer on mammograms.

Researchers at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center analyzed the accuracy of 110 radiologists in screening mammograms from 148 randomly selected women.

"More recently trained radiologists interpreted mammograms more accurately than those trained earlier in a test of cancer-detection accuracy," the researchers reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

"Current reading volume was not statistically significantly associated with interpretive accuracy," the researchers reported.

They said other factors that resulted in better cancer detection were using a center that requires two radiologists to read each X-ray, and that performs more sophisticated breast-imaging procedures as well as routine mammograms.

Other sources: Journal of the National Cancer Institute