Results of the breast cancer population screening circuit at the San Carlos Clinical Hospital

Abstract

Background: The objective of the study was to compare the time difference between diagnose and treatment with relation to switching protocols in screening program, DEPRECAM; and to analyze the screening program over our sample. Methods: It is a retrospective study involving 173 patients with two no time concurrent clinical cohorts referred from DEPRECAM program to San Carlos Clinic Hospital (HCSC) between March 2017 and January 2019. It was compared the time differences between the group forwarded to Breast Pathology service (Group A; n=92) and the group directly forwarded to Radiology department (Group B; n=81), using the non-parametric MannWhitney U test, estimating the difference of the means together with its 95% confidence interval. Results: The averaged time to final diagnosis for group A and group B was 38.55 and 35.01 days respectively; and averaged time to treatment was 102.46 and 95.6 days. The difference between groups was not statistically significant (diagnosis p=0.999; treatment p=0.451). The correlation between sizes recognized in imaging test was reasonable. The consistency between imaging test and Histopathology was weak. Conclusions: The change in protocol does not reduce time significantly.