Breast Cancer Screening and Compliance: A Clinical Audit to Improve the Quality of Management

Objectives

The aim of performing this audit is to observe and analyze record keeping, documentation and follow-up of all the breast cancer patients admitted to a surgical department in terms of screening compliance with the intention of improving the quality of health management in a tertiary care hospital in Peshawar Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan.

Materials and Methods

The audit cycle was conducted in a retrospective manner and data pertaining to all the admitted patients related to breast cancer in the surgical department was collected from January 2024 to July 2024. A total of 125 patients were enrolled in this audit admitted through OPD and emergency. The variables that were included in the audit cycle are the following: Name, age, contact number, date of admission, medical record number (MR number), disease, screening compliance and treatment given. Data was collected in a pre-designed proforma, added to Microsoft excel sheet and analyzed through SPSS software version 23.0. The data was described in the form of description, charts and tables.

Results

On the day of their scheduled appointment, 103 patients (83.1%) responded to telephone calls but only 74 (59.7%) of the candidates presented to breast opd for screening and check-up. The sonologist on duty was able to properly identify 73 (58.9%) cases of left breast cancer and 45 cases of right breast cancer (36.3%) by using the BIRAD score (Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System).

Conclusion

The results of this audit revealed that the patient's response towards breast cancer screening was positive, the data collection and documentation performance was quite satisfactory, and ultrasound is a very effective tool in screening for breast cancer.